Launch of Yourgene Genomic Services
Manchester, UK – 28 September 2020: Yourgene (AIM: YGEN), the international molecular diagnostics group, announces the launch of Yourgene Genomic Services, an integration and expansion of the Company’s international service laboratory offerings. Yourgene Genomic Services becomes a global laboratory service network equipped to be a full life-cycle partner for clinical, research and pharmaceutical organisations.
Yourgene Genomic Services (“YGS”) will bring together a number of Yourgene’s core capabilities, creating a service business that supports partners at the preclinical, clinical, and post-market stages as they develop, manufacture, obtain regulatory approval and commercialise new products and services. YGS will consolidate the Company’s established NIPT and rapidly growing COVID-19 testing laboratories in Manchester, along with Yourgene’s research, oncology and NIPT services in Taiwan. In addition, the Company is expanding its service offering for contract research organisations (‘CRO’), pharmaceutical and biotech partners, which now operates from Manchester as well as Taipei. The provision of the new CRO core services at the Company’s UK headquarters has been enabled by the integration of newly acquired capital equipment and customer relationships plus the recruitment of a new team with longstanding blue-chip pharmaceutical industry relationships under the banner of Ex5 Genomics Ltd.
The additional CRO core services to be provided by Yourgene will also support the Company’s contract development programmes for partnering with external organisations on their product development roadmap. The YGS team has the capability and expertise to offer a full companion development service, from biomarker discovery through to IVD test development and regulatory submissions. To accommodate the expanding CRO core services and facilitate the growth of Yourgene’s COVID-19 testing capacity, the Company is investing over £0.5m in expanding and upgrading its laboratory facilities, equipment and teams in both Taipei and Manchester.
The integrated Yourgene Genomics Services team is already operational and is progressing quality accreditations required to open up additional market segments. The Company will explore additional YGS locations in due course, with a view to offering a seamless 24/7 global laboratory services network.
Lyn Rees, CEO of Yourgene, commented: “The launch of our Genomic Services is another important development for Yourgene and the integration of the Ex5 team is enabling the Company to develop some important blue-chip pharmaceutical & CRO partnerships in the UK, alongside our existing collaborations in Taiwan. We are investing heavily in our expansion and anticipate that the newly integrated and expanded CRO service offering will contribute significantly to our international growth over the coming years. The provision of an enhanced range of services on a global scale is expected to support our revenue growth and we look forward to updating shareholders on our progress.”
This announcement contains inside information for the purposes of Article 7 of EU Regulation 596/2014.
