Vivione Biosciences Corporation announced a new three-year Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with the Food and Drug Administration's National Center for Toxicological Research (NCTR). The focus of the CRADA is to expand the capability of Vivione's RAPID-B diagnostic system. The Vivione RAPID-B system is a revolutionary high-performance diagnostic system for detecting bacterial pathogens.

Unlike other systems that look at a gross response of an entire sample to provide information, the RAPID-B system looks individually at each bacterium's physical properties (including size, shape, and transparency) and analyzes unique responses to probes and DNA dyes. RAPID-B allows the testing of food products in seven hours or less, including sample preparation versus other commercial systems that take up to 48 hours to provide results. Moreover, single shift results are achieved without the need for labor intensive sample preparation steps including centrifugation and immuno-magnetic separation.

In both clinical as well as food safety settings, very low pathogen levels can cause human morbidity and mortality, particularly in such susceptible populations as the elderly, children and immune-suppressed individuals. RAPID-B has the ability to detect extremely low levels of infectious agents in complex biological matrices, thus potentially increasing early diagnoses, specifically in time-critical situations.