Enigma Diagnostics, the decentralised and point-of-care molecular diagnostics company, has received the USPTO grant of US Patent No. 7,659,096 with claims that cover the use of amplification consumables in several current real-time and end point PCR instruments.

Enigma said that this is the recent patent to issue in company’s expanding portfolio of over 300 patents and patent applications. The portfolio includes patents relating to intelligent sample preparation consumables and novel amplification technologies for current and ‘next generation’ molecular diagnostic systems and sample preparation devices.

Enigma continues to expand its worldwide licensing programme and awareness of its broadly applicable and important IP portfolio which includes the US patent. Its technology combines speed and sensitivity of real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) with the simplicity needed for decentralized and point-of-care testing providing results from a raw sample in less than 60 minutes.

Enigma said that it has an exclusive license from the Defence Science Technology Laboratory to a portfolio of patents, which represent over 15 years of UK Ministry of Defence funded Research. It also has licences from Applied Biosystems and Celera Diagnostics for commercialisation of real-time PCR instruments, and from Roche Molecular Systems to practice HybProbe real-time PCR chemistry for human and veterinary in vitro diagnostics.

Enigma’s in-house R&D activities have generated a portfolio of worldwide patent families dedicated to real-time PCR and wider molecular technologies. Many of the patents are granted across a range of core commercial territories including US, EU and Japan with more extensive filing and grants across a number of other key territories.