AOAC Certifies InstantLabs E. coli O157 Test Kit

BALTIMORE, MD--(Marketwired - February 12, 2014) - InstantLabs® announced today that the company has completed AOAC certifications for Food Safety Kits designed to detect the most important food pathogens -- Salmonella, E. coli O157, Listeria species and Listeria monocytogenes.

The AOAC’s certification of InstantLabs Food Safety Kit for E. coli O157 (including O157), was awarded on Feb. 4, receiving AOAC Performance Tested Methods(SM) certification (PTM #011403) for a variety of food matrices.

“The E. coli O157 kit approval highlights InstantLabs’ distinctive ‘total testing solution’ and allows us to offer a full suite of testing solutions with the portable and affordable Hunter Real-Time PCR® system,” said Steven Guterman, Chief Executive Officer.

“We are proud to earn the AOAC certifications for our pathogen-detection test kits and believe we will now compete across a broader marketplace to support food companies and laboratories that need the full testing array,” Guterman added.

The AOAC Performance Tested(SM) certification mark is widely recognized by the global food industry and government agencies and is awarded to products that have passed unbiased and rigorous evaluation. The AOAC previously approved InstantLabs Food Safety Kits for Salmonella, Listeria species and Listeria monocytogenes. Instantlabs also offers porcine and equine species identification tests, allowing food companies to insure the purity of their products.

Significantly, InstantLabs’ Salmonella and E. coli test kits have been designed to produce accurate results using a common enrichment. This capability eliminates the need to prepare two independent enrichments, reducing waste, saving time and money for companies that need quick and accurate test results.

In addition to providing precise, affordable pathogen detection, the Hunter® system’s E. coli Food Safety Kit operates quickly -- providing final results from enriched sample to findings in under two hours, with enrichment times as short as 10 hours.

The Hunter® system is a real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) platform that is easy-to-use and provides rapid, affordable, and accurate pathogen detection. The certification from AOAC for the E. coli 0157 Food Safety Kit further validates the ability of the Hunter® system to accurately and reliably identify food borne pathogens at the point of need, eliminating time lost while samples are shipped to outside testing facilities.

ABOUT THE AOAC: The AOAC Research Institute (AOAC-RI) is a wholly-owned subsidiary of AOAC INTERNATIONAL (AOAC) that administers the AOAC conformity assessment programs, Performance Tested Methods(SM) and Official Methods of Analysis(SM). AOAC is a globally recognized, independent, not-for-profit standards developing association founded in 1884. AOAC serves the analytical community by engaging industry stakeholders to develop voluntary consensus standards for methods and providing analytical methods that demonstrate confidence in analytical results. For more information, visit www.aoac.org.

ABOUT INSTANTLABS: InstantLabs, a molecular diagnostic device company, developed and markets the Hunter Accelerated-PCR® system, a fully-integrated, easy-to-use, portable and affordable real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) platform for rapid, accurate pathogen detection. InstantLabs Medical Diagnostics Corp., the legal entity, offers the Hunter system for use with several food borne pathogen test kits for the global food industry. The Hunter system is especially well suited for use at points-of-care and points-of-need to detect and analyze a wide variety of common and problematic pathogens. InstantLabs’ growing worldwide customer base includes some of the world’s leading food companies. InstantLabs is also developing products for additional markets, including medical diagnostics where gold-standard accuracy, combined with ease-of-use and rapid results, are critical. InstantLabs was founded in 2008 and is located in Baltimore, Maryland. For more information please visit www.instantlabs.com.