NEW YORK — OpGen on Thursday reported a 54 percent increase in preliminary third quarter revenues as it consolidates its product portfolio following its acquisition of German diagnostics firm Curetis earlier this year.
For the three-month period ended September 30, OpGen expects revenues of $1.0 million versus $648,000 in the same quarter a year ago. The Gaithersburg, Maryland-based firm finished the third quarter with $10.4 million in cash.
OpGen noted that it has expanded an at the market (ATM) stock offering program by an additional $6.4 million and that it continues to have access to a €5 million ($5.9 million) tranche of nondilutive debt financing for SARS-CoV-2-related programs under a deal between Curetis and the European Investment Bank.
At the beginning of the second quarter, OpGen closed its previously announced acquisition of Curetis, which included that firm's bioinformatics and next-generation sequencing service lab subsidiary Ares Genetics.
Since then, OpGen has decided to refocus its efforts around its US Food and Drug Administration-cleared Unyvero molecular diagnostics platform, which it picked up through the Curetis acquisition, and around its bioinformatics operations.
OpGen said that Ares is currently in negotiations with an undisclosed global in vitro diagnostics firm over a potential licensing or other deal for its technology. It also anticipates starting US clinical trials of Unyvero test cartridges for complicated urinary tract infections and invasive joint infections in 2021, noting that tests for both indications are already CE-IVD marked.
The company also said that a bacterial isolate version of its Acuitas AMR Gene Panel for antimicrobial resistance (AMR) genes and certain pathogens is expected to receive FDA clearance in the near term, with a commercial launch in the US planned in the following months.
Meanwhile, the company has decided to discontinue its FISH products business by mid-2021, as well as to cease a clinical trial of the Acuitas AMR Gene Panel with urine samples.
"We believe that following the portfolio consolidation and strategic product pipeline decisions taken by the board, OpGen along with its subsidiary companies Curetis … and Ares Genetics … has a focused molecular diagnostics platform strategy and growing emphasis on bioinformatics offerings that will further generate shareholder value," OpGen President and CEO Oliver Schacht said in a statement. "I am convinced that our strategic initiatives will provide strong growth opportunities and secure our future as a global leader in infectious diseases and AMR diagnostics."