Member Info for NiptSteve

Some of the websites on the list look very amateurish and wouldn’t inspire confidence in terms of booking a test!

Compare some of those to the myhealthchecked website and the latter looks so much more professional - a shame that came to the game too late for this scheme.

As a very rough estimate based on the test availability on myhealthchecked website I’d say they are doing between 130-200 tests per week and they are not long launched so maybe another 1k tests and processing for Yourgene. Oh to get an update on what our current capacity is and if we have reached 20k per month yet.

Well we’re not down as a private provider for the test and release scheme:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/list-of-private-providers-of-coronavirus-testing/list-of-private-providers-of-coronavirus-testing

Whether we supply any of those listed with Clarigene I don’t know.

Yourgene presented the Clarigene test at the recent Taiwan Healthcare Expo - are we able to sell the test out there or is a specific approval needed?

https://youtu.be/Rov5wKyoG-o

I’d be surprised beyond belief if we can do 2,500 covid tests per day - not even half that amount I doubt. That would be a massive increase on the 20k per month by January said in the last presentation I think.

Re Concepta they were showing 90 clarigene tests in stock a couple of days ago and they now have 87 left so this is never going to make a dent in the 500k tests that Lyn said we could manufacture.

Let’s hope some of the hoped-for news arrives before Xmas (iona nx approval is US, covid update, nhs news etc).

Oh to hear something about when we expect to be selling IONA NX in the US.

“ SVB Leerink analyst Puneet Souda said in a research note on Tuesday that UHC's new policy affects about 37 million covered lives and should be a positive for companies that provide NIPT for average-risk pregnancies, such as Illumina, "potentially Invitae," and especially Natera.”

https://www.genomeweb.com/business-news/unitedhealthcare-cover-nipt-average-risk-pregnancies

From the https://myhealthchecked.com/buy-covid-test/ website:

“Our simple nasal swab is less invasive than upper nasal and throat swabs, so it’s easy to test all family members.”

Maybe they have early access to a newer version as this method of collection isn’t mentioned on the Yourgene website or any partner websites that are using Clarigene.

As someone who has had to get a swab from young children using the NHS test I can say this is big advantage over other tests!

Recent tweet with a video of the Yourgene covid testing laboratory:

https://twitter.com/yourgene_health/status/1333401240215105537?s=21

Announced today DYPD to be rolled out in England:

https://www.bopa.org.uk/dpyd-testing-policy-published-by-nhs-england-and-nhs-improvement/

North West Genomic Laboratory Hub tweeted this evening they are offering the test (no mention of the test being used or recommended). Hopefully we’ll hear something official next week with some (cough) numbers.

Let’s see if we make this list due to be published on Dec 15th:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/testing-to-release-for-international-travel-minimum-standards-for-testing/minimum-standards-for-private-sector-providers-of-covid-19-testing-for-testing-to-release-for-international-travel

Re Clarigene being left behind by other tests - I don’t think it will be too long before we see progress on a simpler/less uncomfortable means of providing a sample.

Constant buys but not shifting the share price!

Interesting read around the recent staff increase:

Before the pandemic, Yourgene Health designed, developed, manufactured and processed genetic screening tests for pregnancies, cystic fibrosis, cancer treatment and more. When Covid-19 hit, the company developed its own coronavirus test, quickly scaling its production and processing. "We had to expand because there are so many samples," says Joanne Cross, director of marketing, adding that the company hired 30 new staff. "We've taken on additional lab space and invested heavily in refitting the labs to accommodate additional services."

That sudden growth was possible amid lockdown because Yourgene Health is based at Citylabs 1.0 in Manchester, located on the campus of the UK’s largest NHS Trust and part of the Bruntwood SciTech network. Being located at Citylabs made scaling up much easier, thanks to a location only metres from two world-class universities and the support for direct connections into them that simplified recruitment, says Cross. "It's been a massive help."

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/bruntwood-scitech-scale-up

Interesting report re the economic case for introducing DPYD testing in Scotland - numerous mentions of our Elucigene DYPD test:

“An alternative test of interest in the Scottish context is the Elucigene® DPYD multiplex assay. This assay allows for rapid simultaneous detection of six known DPYD variants, including those that affect DPD enzyme function.”

http://www.healthcareimprovementscotland.org/our_work/technologies_and_medicines/topics_assessed/assessment_04-20.aspx

They were on the Yourgene webinar a couple of weeks ago as a partner who use Clarigene - I don’t know if they also use other tests tbh.

I doubt big numbers from Boots regardless but in absence of official news I’m trying to see where Clarigene is being sold.

I’ve also seen one of the Elucigene distributors have Clarigene listed in their website.

Recova-19 are one of “our partners” who gave a presentation about their covid testing service on our recent webinar - they are now providing their service (and our Clarigene test?) to Boots:

https://www.boots.com/health-pharmacy-advice/covid-19-testing/covid-19-testing-service

Wonder whether this is already accounted for in our October 10k capacity or this will be driving the expansion?

This newly formed company in Indonesia in response to covid (part of a much larger business) appears to be offering 3 PCR antigen tests - Coyote, Strongstep and Clarigene.

There are no product details on their website so unclear whether this is the Yourgene test - we’ve had no info re product registration in Indonesia - but it’s a possibility this is us.

https://sansicomedica.co.id/clarigene/

I posted a link to a contract given to Source Bioscience valued at £3m and they are ramping up to 10k tests per day so I wouldn’t expect too much from the NHS side of things as our known processing capacity is much less than this - saying that, they have been in discussions for a number of weeks so this gives me hope something a bit bigger is being discussed.

Let’s hope for news this week that contains volumes and capacity plans along with a strong H1 trading update.

Perhaps to get an idea around the moonshot volumes we may get it's interesting to see Source Bioscience have recently been awarded a contract worth £3m to support the NHS and government to reach 200k daily target.

http://bidstats.uk/tenders/2020/W41/736297089
https://www.sourcebioscience.com/news/source-bioscience-uk-ltd-offer-nhs-covid-19-testing

They are increasing their capacity from 1k to 5k per day so will be processing up to 150k'ish per month which is way beyond our current/known capacity.

What will our capacity end up at?

Roll on the trading and covid update this month to see how many further blocks of 10k we are bringing in to increase our capacity to serve private and public customers.

Initially I thought this was the Yourgene DPYD assay but they are saying a 3 day turnaround whereas ours is 1 day so not sure - with our test being used by NHS and rolled out across Europe, Australia and US it seems crazy if Wales is not using us!

“Wales Has Become First in UK to Routinely Offer DPYD Test for Chemo Patients”

https://genomicspartnership.wales/2020/10/07/wales-becomes-the-first-in-uk-to-routinely-provide-dpyd-screening/

And our assay FYI:

https://www.yourgene-health.com/molecular-genetics

The contract win as opposed to the value imo carries more weight for this particular rns. In terms of value the latest annual report showed sales of £2m for the UK and I'd assume that a large percentage of this is from St Georges.

Remember, there were 4 other bids for this and one of them would have been Illumina who would have loved to have secured this - and with St Georges having to move over to the Illumina platform regardless I had concerns about winning this.

At some point the NHS will finally introduce NIPT nationally for (initially) high-risk pregnancies and St Georges is likely to be a front runner for providing/supporting this service.

With other EU tenders coming up, to have St Georges using our new test and on hand to provide a reference will be worth the value of the contract many times over.

I'd recommend re-watching the Capital Markets Day video which includes a presentation from Professor Basky Thilaganathan (Nov 2019):

https://webcasting.brrmedia.co.uk/broadcast/5dad9c0034a3cf1389e7e0c9

In relation to covid this digital event looks worth registering for:

https://t.co/jGaO1KDIHs?amp=1

This really is great news - a very competitive tender and to have St George’s on our new Illumina platform will of course help convince others labs or hospitals going forward to go with us.

Been waiting for this news for a while now - can you imagine how it would have looked if we had lost this contract to Illumina?!

Not long until we find out I guess but re moonshot i’d expect our involvement to be the processing side of things rather than clarigene.

Our initial 10k block is taken up with private testing so I wonder how many further blocks of 10k will be needed going forward for NHS capacity and increasing private needs.