A Medical Device Daily

Diagnostic company Nanogen (San Diego) said last week that it would consolidate its point-of-care manufacturing operations by closing its operations in Canada by the end of the year as part of an effort to cut costs and improve margins of its rapid-testing products. The company said its current operations in Toronto would be moved to its San Diego facility.

Nanogen estimates that it will reduce its workforce by about 30 people and cut overall costs, starting in 2009, by roughly $3 million.

The companys qualitative cardiac products, purchased two years ago from Spectral Diagnostics, are made in Toronto, while development and pilot manufacturing activities for the companys next-generation immunoassay activities are in San Diego. Transferring operations will reduce manufacturing cost and further focus resources on the next generation platform and products, it said.

Nanogens congestive heart failure product, based on NT-proBNP, will continue to be supplied by Princeton Bio Meditech and is not affected by these actions.

"The decision to consolidate these operations is driven by our commitment to improving profitability and reaching positive operating cash flow," said David Ludvigson, Nanogens president/COO. "It also supports our ongoing commitment to bringing new quantitative cardiac and infectious disease products to market on an innovative, proprietary point of care platform. R&D and manufacturing will now be in the same facility and will be more closely aligned as we develop our future rapid testing products."

The company said it would transition manufacturing activities to San Diego over the next several months and does not expect any interruption of product supplies to customers.

Nanogens products include molecular diagnostic kits and reagents, and kits for rapid point-of-care testing.

In other news from Nanogen, the company said it received approval from Nasdaq to transfer the listing of its common stock from the Nasdaq Global Market to the Nasdaq Capital Market. Its trading symbol will remain "NGEN" and trading of the companys stock will be "largely unaffected by this change," Nanogen said.

The listing transfer is part of action taken in response to a non-compliance letter received from Nasdaq last fall because Nanogen did not meet the minimum bid price requirement of $1 a share. The company said that once its securities are transferred to the Nasdaq Capital Market it will have 180 calendar days, or until the end of November, to regain compliance with Nasdaqs minimum bid price requirement of $1 a share.