The companies, which are exploring the possibility of a future marketing collaboration in this area, said the collaboration was discontinued due to current technical incompatibilities between Gen-Probe’s nucleic acid testing technologies and 3M’s proprietary microfluidics instrument platform.
Under the terms of the discontinued agreement, Gen-Probe was responsible for assay development, which 3M funded. 3M also agreed to pay milestones to Gen-Probe based on technical and commercial progress.
Steve Kondor, Gen-Probe’s senior vice president of sales and marketing, said: “We intend to evaluate the merits of developing molecular tests for healthcare-associated infections to run on our next-generation automated instruments. This approach, if successful, could help us develop products more rapidly, while further establishing our instrument platforms among current and future low- to mid-volume customers.”