There is a confusion between ELISA and manual tests in reference to the Abbott license: All tests, with the exception of radioimmunoassay (RIA) are licensed to Abbott. They can make them, sell them and pay us royalties, whether they use ELISA, chemoluminescence, rapid tests or some other format, provided it is not RIA. However, rapid tests and manual tests (in any format), are licensed on a non-exclusive basis and therefore BioCurex is not limited by the semi-exclusive limitations in the agreement. In other words, we can license, manufacture and sell manual assays to as many licensees as we like, whether they are in either RIA, ELISA, chemiluminescene, or rapid test formats, PROVIDED they are not automated; i.e. a technician has to carry out the assay rather than a machine like the Architect®.

Now, about the ELISA: Even though we can manufacture and sell manual chemiluminescence tests unrestrictedly, few labs have the necessary instrument to read chemiluminescence (we are not referring here to an automated instrument capable of carrying out hundreds of tests per hour but rather to a bench top “reader”, which reads the intensity of the reaction in each well of a 96-well plastic plate and either prints the results on a paper strip or sends them to a computer for further number-crunching and printing). Chemiluminescence readers sell for tens of thousands of dollars whereas a decent ELISA reader costs about $8,000. Moreover, there are hundreds of ELISA tests (in manual 96-well plate format), whereas there are not that many manual tests on chemiluminescence. Thus, a lab can get more bangs out of an ELISA reader that is cheaper than from a more expensive chemiluminescence reader. That is why most labs have ELISA readers and why we developed an ELISA version of the RECAF blood test.

Dr. Ricardo Moro.