February 18, 2010 – Research Triangle Park, NC — An innovative Durham-based company will highlight its platform of diagnostics technologies at CED Biotech 2010, a premiere event for life science businesses in the Southeast. Advanced Animal Diagnostics (AAD), an R&D company dedicated to bringing rapid, highly-accurate animal diagnostic tests to the farm, will be one of 40 exhibitors at the Biotech 2010 event in Raleigh Feb. 22-23.
“AAD is at the exciting intersection of two of North Carolina’s most important industries: technology and agriculture,” said Joy Parr Drach, president of AAD, “Our technology platform is based on taking diagnostic tools developed for human medicine to the animal agriculture market, with the first product focused on improving milk quality by controlling mastitis, the costliest disease facing the world’s dairy producers.”
As the human point-of-care diagnostic market has ballooned in recent years -- with projections of more than an $18 billion global market by 2012 – and so has competition. However, the production animal market is underserved, representing very significant growth opportunities for on-farm diagnostics products.
“Even in today’s challenging economic environment, AAD is succeeding in its efforts to secure funding to move products from prototype to commercialization,” said Parr Drach. “This success is a testament to the power of AAD’s technology to improve animal health, boost a livestock producer’s bottom line, and maximize food quality and safety for consumers.”
In 2009, the company introduced its first product, the revolutionary QuickSmear™ rapid differential slide. This new tool for dairy researchers is the forerunner of technology that will later be introduced for on-farm use by dairy producers. The QuickSmear slide allows researchers to prepare a slide in less than one minute and more easily identify three different types of live white blood cells in milk -- lymphocytes, neutrophils and macrophages. This replaces manual milk smear preparation, which takes 30 to 90 minutes. This technology uses the body’s immune response to detect mastitis at a subclinical level earlier and more reliably than by using traditional methods like somatic cell counts or the California Mastitis Test.
Advanced Animal Diagnostics (AAD) was founded to commercialize exclusively licensed proprietary technology for the diagnosis of farm-animal diseases, beginning with those that affect milk and milk products. In addition, the company has also developed intellectual property internally, which will have many applications on farms and in veterinary medicine. AAD is located at 1912 HWY 54 East, Durham, NC 27713. For more information about Advanced Animal Diagnostics, please visit www.advancedanimaldiagnostics.com.