Beaverton, OR – Sedia Biosciences Corporation, formerly of Portland Oregon, today announced the relocation to and opening of their new assay development and manufacturing facility in Beaverton, Oregon. The 27,000 square foot facility provides for both current growth as well as additional near-term expansion and enables immediate scale-up of manufacturing capacity as well as research capabilities. Equipped with multiple state of the art, environmentally controlled production, quality and research laboratories, high throughput production equipment, and expanded warehouse capacity, the facility is also designed to accommodate the “new normal” of business in a pandemic challenged environment. The new facility will have a much needed immediate impact on production capacity of Sedia’s products, now being used in partnership with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, www.cdc.gov), PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, www.pepfar.gov), and other NGOs and stakeholders working with Sedia.
Dr. Ronald Mink, Chief Science Officer and President, who cofounded Sedia with Roger Gale, Sedia’s CEO and Chairman, stated that “Sedia has been focused on fulfilling the growing demand from CDC, PEPFAR and others for our AsantéTM HIV Rapid Recency® Assay. This test is the first rapid point-of-care assay with the capability to both quickly verify HIV status of a patient, and determine if they are a recent, or ‘new’ infection. Public Health agencies worldwide use this valuable information to identify where new outbreaks of HIV are occurring. Tracking these early cases is important as they have the highest likelihood of transmitting HIV and may be doing so unknowingly. Such individuals can be the source of new and sudden outbreaks of the disease. Our products are intended to break this cycle. COVID has shown that what the world needs is simple, fast and accurate diagnostic tests in large numbers. This is what we do. Sedia is dynamic, growing rapidly and is very relevant to the current global health crisis.”
According to Nancy Lime, Vice President Operations, “Globally, an estimated 19% of persons living with HIV are unaware of their status. Individuals with recent HIV infections can be responsible for up to 40% of new infections in their community. Since HIV can remain asymptomatic and undetected for months, recently infected individuals can continue to pass the virus to others. New approaches and tools are needed to fight HIV and other global pandemics and this technology can potentially be applied to other diseases, including the SARS-CoV-2 ‘COVID-19’ virus and sexually transmitted diseases.”