Abingdon Health

Abingdon Health is a British manufacturer of lateral flow assay diagnostic tests, sometimes called rapid tests, lateral flow immunoassays (LFIA), lateral flow tests (LFT) or quick tests.^[1] Since its formation in 2008, Abingdon Health has grown to become an organisation of over 200 people and has developed and manufactured lateral flow rapid tests across multiple industries.

Headquartered in York UK, the company offers lateral flow product research and development, regulatory support, technical transfer and manufacturing.

Lateral flow tests made by Abingdon Health[]

Abingdon Health develops and manufactures tests on behalf of its contract customers and has produced and commercialised its own products. Abingdon Health has developed and manufactured sandwich (Non-Competitive) and Inhibition (Competitive) lateral flow immunoassays in areas such as COVID-19, Sexual Health, Fertility, Animal Health, Plant Health, to name a few.^{[citation needed]}

In 2015 Abingdon Health launched Seralite^[2] a rapid diagnostic device for the quantitative measurement of kappa (K) and lambda (λ) immunoglobulin free light chains (FLCs) in serum. The company also produces PCRD and PCRD FLEX:^[3] lateral flow tests designed to detect nucleic acid following isothermal amplification with technologies such as Loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) or Recombinase polymerase amplification (RPA), for example. In addition the Abingdon Health owns and manufactures the Pocket Diagnostic brand. A range of tests designed to detect important and commercially damaging plant pathogens such as Phytophthora and Potato virus Y.^{[citation needed]}

Response to COVID-19 pandemic[]

At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Abingdon Health responded to the British government's 'call to arms' to produce a UK-made COVID-19 rapid antibody test. The company initiated the development of AbC-19 rapid antibody test, a test for the presence of IgG antibody against the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein as part of the Abingdon Health led UK Rapid Test Consortium program.^[4] Test development commenced in early 2020 with AbC-19 achieving CE marking for professional use across the United Kingdom and the European Union in July 2020.^[5] In October 2020 the UK government announced the signing of a deal with Abingdon Health for the supply of 1 million AbC-19 rapid antibody tests.^[6] In March 2021 the UK Biobank included the AbC-19 rapid antibody test in a Coronavirus self-test antibody study to investigate the long-term health effects of SARS-CoV-2 infection (“Long COVID”).^[7] In April 2021, AbC-19 was paired with a mobile app to provide a antibody certificate solution. ^[8]