NEW YORK – Abingdon Health will distribute Salignostics' Salistick saliva-based pregnancy test in the UK and Ireland, the companies said on Tuesday.
Salignostics is based in Jerusalem and offers a number of saliva-based, lateral flow immunoassays. Its Salistick pregnancy test is capable of detecting the hormone β-hCG and can be used instead of approaches that rely on urine as a sample, for example.
Under the terms of the agreement, Abingdon Health will now sell Salistick to UK and Irish customers. The test will also be cobranded under the York, UK-based firm's Abingdon Simply Test menu, and offered via its e-commerce platform. The companies said that the Salistick pregnancy test is CE-IVD marked, and that they expect UK regulatory approval by the second quarter of this year.
Other terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Ireland is an EU member, while the UK, which left the bloc in 2020, is introducing its own regulatory regime.
Abingdon CEO Chris Yates said in a statement that Salistick offers women "the opportunity to test for pregnancy in a cleaner, more straightforward and easier way," and such a saliva-based assay is a "long overdue development in the pregnancy testing market."
In addition to acting as a distribution partner, Abingdon maintains its own lateral flow assay development and manufacturing capabilities and commercialized the AbC-19 COVID-19 antibody test, among others. Salignostics, which raised $8 million in a Series A round last year, also offers a saliva-based test for SARS-CoV-2, called SaliCov.