Qorvo® announced achievement of a key milestone in the development of a veterinary point-of-care (POC) diagnostic platform for Zomedica Pharmaceuticals Corp. Zomedica announced that its TRUFORMA™ POC platform, based on Qorvo’s acoustic resonators, and first assay have completed final verification. This is a critical milestone to enabling commercial manufacturing production capabilities.

Qorvo Biotechnologies LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Qorvo US, Inc., signed a development and supply agreement in 2018 with Zomedica for its POC platform to be tested for veterinary use. Under the agreement, Qorvo is responsible for developing the POC diagnostic instrument and related assay cartridges, while Zomedica is responsible for the validation, marketing and sale of the assays, instruments and related assay cartridges. Zomedica’s TRUFORMA platform uses Qorvo's differentiated sensors, derived from the fundamental bulk acoustic wave (BAW) technology that is deployed in approximately 2 billion devices worldwide. In this new POC application, Qorvo combines expertise in RF devices, microfluidics and medical test platform integration.

“This milestone is the culmination of six years of intensive research, development and application of our proven RF technology to fast and accurate point-of-care diagnostics,” said James Klein, president of Qorvo Infrastructure and Defense Products, the business under which the company’s biotechnology work is being done. “While our focus has been on the immunoassay market, we see potential to use this capability for molecular diagnostics, enabling a dual-use POC platform for rapid and accurate identification of infectious diseases in humans including viral pathogens.”

Using acoustic resonators introduces a compelling and proven technology to the veterinary diagnostics market, offering a differentiated detection technique from existing optical or fluorescence methods. Qorvo’s acoustic-resonator-based POC solution testing indicates higher sensitivity than these traditional detection methods, offering performance and accuracy at the point-of-care that is similar to central lab testing.

The Qorvo testing platform is an investigational technology currently limited to investigational use and is not available for sale.