The AnteoTech Ltd (ASX: ADO) share price has been a disappointing performer on Wednesday.
In afternoon trade the biotech company's shares are sinking 12% lower to 11 cents.
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Why is the Anteotech share price sinking lower?
Investors have been hitting the sell button today despite the release of study results from its COVID-19 Antigen Rapid Test using stored patient swab samples.
According to the release, an independent study was conducted by Spanish lateral flow developer and manufacturer Operon at its research facilities in Zaragoza, Spain.
This study was undertaken using locally acquired positive COVID-19 patient samples and a range of local negative samples.
The release explains that all the samples were Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) tested prior to the study. This means the study was able to have a direct head to head comparison of the performance of the AnteoTech COVID-19 Antigen Rapid Test against the lab-based testing process.
The latter is widely regarded as a very reliable measure of test sensitivity, according to management.
What did the study find?
The study found that Operon's results aligned with AnteoTech's in-house laboratory results using recombinant samples.
This means the test detected COVID-19 in the range of Ct 30 to Ct 35. This PCR level is typically recorded from patients who are at very early onset or recovery stages of the disease cycle and have very low levels of viral load.
AnteoTech's CEO, Derek Thomson, commented: "We are very pleased to have reached this key milestone in our development of the AnteoTech COVID-19 Antigen Rapid Test. The control of COVID-19 requires highly sensitive testing to ensure all positive patients are identified and isolated at the point of care to ensure they don't continue to spread the disease."
"We believe we are making an important contribution to the control of the disease and we look forward to entering clinical trials following the final stages of our validation phase which we believe will lead to making our test available to global markets very soon," he added.
