Spain’s Pharma Mar Aims to Introduce Coronavirus Test in March . Post By Bloomberg.com . ¡¡ Se Acerca Marzo ... !!! .

By Thomas Gualtieri // February 18, 2020 .

*.- Company says kit can analyze 96 samples in less than one hour.

*.- Firm has ties to Wuhan, where it set up an office 8 years ago .

A scanning electron microscope image
of the virus, grown from a lab culture.

 Source: NIAID-RML

Spanish drugmaker Pharma Mar SA aims to start selling tests for the novel coronavirus next month, planning to distribute them through a unit the company set up years ago in the Chinese city at the epicenter of the outbreak.

Pharma Mar’s Genomica unit is trying to get accelerated approval from the Spanish Agency of Medicines and Medical Devices so that it could introduce the diagnostic kits in the second week of March, Genomica Chief Executive Officer Rosario Cospedal said in an interview.

The Spanish company, whose main product is a cancer treatment developed from sea creatures, will compete with a slew of other drug companies, universities and health authorities to supply coronavirus tests. Genomica opened an office in Wuhan eight years ago and expanded the business there in 2018, which may help leverage distribution. The coronavirus outbreak has killed more than 1,800 people, most of them in the Hubei province surrounding Wuhan. Pharma Mar has warehouses in the city and is working with local partners such as Huasin Science Co.

Genomica needs to test the kit on human samples containing the virus before it gets approval, and Spanish health regulators have said the procedure will be quick given the current state of emergency.

The company already markets diagnosis kits for 20 different viruses linked to respiratory diseases, including the three kinds of coronavirus most commonly detected in humans. The new test will be able to simultaneously analyze 96 samples such as blood and saliva in less than 5 hours.

The firm is able to make hundreds of thousands of kits per year and expects to eventually increase the production to millions by leveraging its Chinese distribution contracts, said Cospedal.

“We will take advantage on the existing marketing channels to distribute them” both in China and in other Asian countries, she said. Other international distributors already contacted Genomica to start marketing the test worldwide, Cospedal said.