Biacore establishes new business unit to analyze food quality

To address public concerns about the quality of the food supply, Biacore International (Uppsala, Sweden) has formed a new company called XenoSense Ltd., and a new business unit within Biacore aimed at analyzing food. Based in Belfast, Northern Ireland, XenoSense will develop and produce reagents and kits for the analysis of food products using Biacore's Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR) technology. Along with the University Challenge Fund, Biacore has provided initial funding to XenoSense, which is owned by Queens University and University of Ulster in Belfast, and private investors.

In addition, XenoSense has an agreement with the Department of Agricultural and Rural Development (DARD) in Northern Ireland to commercialize a number of products and certain research areas developed by DARD in the field of food analysis.

XenoSense will focus its research efforts on developing new Qflex analyte kits for the analysis of food products using the recently introduced BIACORE Q system. Each analyte kit contains a sensor chip and the reagents needed to detect a specific analyte, and when used in conjunction with the BIACORE Q system, the analyte concentration analysis can be determined. XenoSense will build on the technology that Biacore has introduced in earlier analyte kits, such as those for the analysis of folic acid and biotin in fortified foods and vitamin B12.

Biacore has also created a new business unit, Business Unit Food, to enable it to fully capitalize on the potential of its SPR technology in the area of food analysis. While Biacore has been developing tools for food analysis since 1993, the formation of this new business unit signals Biacore's ambitions to play a significant role in improving the quality of food analysis globally over the next decade.

Esa Stenberg has been appointed vice president and head of Biacore's Business Unit Food. For the last seven years, Esa has been the manager of Biacore's R&D Department of BIA technology and has been responsible for the technical evaluation of Biacore's SPR technology for food quality and safety analysis.

"The formation of XenoSense Ltd. has been driven by the need to address increased public concerns about the composition and quality of food, in particular the presence of harmful agents such as chemical residues, toxins and bacteria," commented Stenberg. "There is a clear need for a reliable method to detect the presence of contaminants, for example antibiotics, in food and we are confident that the reagents that we intend to develop at Xenosense can play an important role in achieving this goal."

Welcoming today's announcement, Brid Rodgers, minister of agriculture and rural development for Northern Ireland, said: "I am extremely pleased that Biacore has decided to support the setting up of XenoSense in Belfast. The decision highlights both the positive business environment, and the high level of scientific expertise that exists in Northern Ireland and we look forward to seeing its technology playing an important role in improving food quality in the future."

For more information: Biacore AB, Rapsgatan 7, SE-754 50 Uppsala, Sweden. Tel: +46-18-675700. Fax: +46-18-150110.

Edited by Laura DeFrancesco
Managing Editor, Bioresearch Online
Email: ldefrancesco@bioresearchonline.com

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