OMEGA Diagnostics is mulling the sale of its allergens business following an approach by one of its commercial partners.

As it announced an eight percent uplift in pre-tax profits to £560,000, on revenue up 11 per cent to £6.4m, the Alva-based company also said that its point-of-care testing kit for HIV patients will be ready for production in the second half of 2017.

Omega was approached last week by Tyne and Weir-based Immunodiagnostic Systems Holdings (IDS), the licensor of its Allersys allergen-testing product with a “view to changing the nature of the commercial relationship” with the company. “This could extend to the acquisition of all or part of it allergy business,” said chairman David Evans.

Kieron Harbinson finance director: “It’s clearly early days; there needs to be an engagement programme with IDS. We will examine all options, but the fact they have made an approach tells us they recognise the value of the asset we’ve created over the past five years. Until there is clarification we will continue to develop the range of tests.”

In October Omega CE-Marked its allergy launch panel, comprising 41 allergens which are capable of being run on IDS’ iSYS instrument. There are plans to grow this number to 120 – for which it received a £1.8m grant from Scottish Enterprise in August.

The company has also made “significant progress” with its Visitect CD4 product. After lengthy delays, the tool for determining in the field whether HIV patients require retroviral drug treatment, has now been tested in more than 500 patients in three UK hospitals.

Production will now commence on 10,000 devices for external field trials in India, France and sub-Saharan Africa.

“A lot of data is going to come from these studies in the first calendar quarter,” said Mr Shepherd. “It takes some time to verify all that data so we’re expecting at the moment we’ll be launching the product with a CE-Marking in the second half of calendar 2017.”

The World Health Organisation has estimated that around 22 to 23 million CD4 kits could be required per year, retailing at $5.

“There is a significant market out there and everyone we speak to in this global health arena is saying we need this product, we need it desperately, right down at field level,” said Mr Shepherd.

The company’s allergy and autoimmune division saw sales grow 11 per cent to £1.76m, while its infectious disease division grew sales by one per cent to £1.23m.

In this area its Pune site in India is now producing Malaria point of care kits, which Mr Shepherd said would drive growth in that division. “We’ve invested £1m in Pune and it’s now time for that to start generating a commercial return,” said Mr Harbison. “Malaria will be first but we’ve got a pipeline of future products to come of that facility.”

Its food intolerance division grew 15 per cent to £3.84m, driven by ongoing success in the US. Omega also noted growth in Middle East and India, where sales grew 46 per cent.