Nordic Biomarker was awarded the Swedish Government’s prize Exporter of the Year 2022 at a ceremony at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

”I am so happy, proud and thankful that what we are achieving together at Nordic Biomarker gets this recognition. All of us share this award and it gives us that extra push as we continue our exciting growth journey!” says Rikard Rodén, CEO.

”While we have come some way, we are convinced that we are still only in the starting blocks. New products, new clients and new markets will enable our growth for a long time ahead. You ain’t seen nothing yet!”

Citation – Exporter of the Year
“In recent years, Nordic Biomarker has shown an impressive growth rate and strong, genuine Swedish capacity for innovation that saves lives.
With its all-Swedish research and production, the company is a role model in its field. The fact that almost all products are exported to leading medical device companies helps Sweden advance in the international life sciences field.”

Image credit: Frida Drake/Regeringskansliet

In the middle of the summer, we packed our bags and flew to London for the ISTH Congress. We were so pleased to get to have so many interesting conversations at our monter, listen to so many intellegent speakers, and, on top of everything, see so many people at our own presentation theater on the subject of PT DOAC, featuring coagulation experts Deborah Siegal, Steven Kitchen, Mark Crowther, Tomas Lindahl and our very own Liselotte Onelöv.

Experience from the pandemic has shown D-dimer to be a prognostic marker for mortality in Covid-19 patients, as well as an aid in managing anticoagulant treatment in this group.

With support in scientific publications, we have now included this as an intended purpose for our D-dimer reagents. Accordingly, our D-dimer reagents can be used

• to exclude the presence of thrombosis in patients with suspected venous thromboembolism (VTE)
• as an aid in patient management in Covid-19 disease.

We are very happy and proud to share the news about our upcoming grant: Gnistspridare!

The name means “spark spreader”, and the grant will go to a person, group or company in Östergötland or Västerbotten that light other’s spark for natural science. That may sound like a broad scope, and it is. A “gnistspridare” can be doing anything from excursions and shows to magazines and podcasts, can be interested in anything from stars and natural forces to marshes and seals – anyone who spreads their interest for natural science can apply for this grant.

We will award two grants, 50 000 SEK each, one in Östergötland and one in Västerbotten. We accept applications between 2022-05-15 and 2022-08-31.

Go ahead and apply, or spread the news to all “gnistspridare” around you!

We are pleased to announce that Swedish private equity company Procuritas has taken a majority stake in Nordic Biomarker. Together, Nordic Biomarker and Procuritas will continue building a world-leading coagulation diagnostics company.

Things are moving quickly at Nordic Biomarker. Only during the last year, the merger with subsidiary Medirox has been finalised and we have released two new products, our vWF Antigen and Protein C reagents. The most recent news is that Nordic Biomarker is partnering with private equity company Procuritas.

”Together with our new Swedish majority owner Procuritas, who share our vision for the company to become a leading global supplier of products for reliable coagulation diagnostics, we are now in a better position than ever before to continue to grow and to expand our product portfolio for coagulation diagnostics. We look forward to this partnership and a successful journey together!” says Rikard Rodén, CEO at Nordic Biomarker.

Procuritas has a strong track record of investing in companies that have the potential for transformational growth and are looking to accelerate Nordic Biomarker’s growth from a niche leader to a global challenger in coagulation testing.

Since the founding in 2007, Nordic Biomarker has grown from a small OEM manufacturer to a force to reckon with. In 2017, Nordic Biomarker teamed up with Medirox to provide an even broader range of routine and specialty reagents for IVD coagulation testing, offering both OEM products and CE-marked reagent kits. Nordic Biomarker had a revenue of 131M SEK in 2021 and has approximately 80 employees. This journey will continue with Procuritas as majority owner. Nordic Biomarker is investing significantly in research and development of new products and has several new products in pipeline.

”We are now positioned to accelerate our product portfolio expansion and to deliver the products that patients, physicians and the market needs”, says Rikard Rodén.

Johan Conradsson, Co-Managing Partner at Procuritas, comments:
“With our ageing population and the trend towards science-based health testing, we see great opportunities for Nordic Biomarker to continue its impressive journey. The company has high-quality products for patients, and holds a unique and competitive position in a growing market. There are strong organic growth initiatives in place as well as exciting potential for M&A, so we see a great future for this business.”

About Procuritas
Procuritas is a mid-market Nordic private equity investor, building up niche market-leading companies through transformative growth in service industry consolidations, digital consumer businesses, software and select industrial sectors.  As the longest-established private equity firm in the Nordics with a 35-year track record, Procuritas has carefully invested in more than 45 companies, accelerated their growth and helped them to realize their true business potential. The long-serving team is characterized by its passion for business, hands-on experience, enthusiasm, commitment to ESG-linked value creation initiatives and strong belief that they are allies in the quest to build strong and sustainable businesses. Read more at www.procuritas.com.

We are celebrating the official launch of our newest product: vWF Antigen!

vWF is short for “von Willebrand factor”, which is a large protein that plays an important part in the coagulation process. Von Willebrand disease (vWD) is the most common hereditary bleeding disorder, affecting up to 1% of the population. The condition means that the patient has either an insufficient quantity or insufficient quality of vWF, which leads to abnormal bleeding. The diagnosis process is complicated and requires many different steps, where a vWF Antigen assays is one. 

This has been a long journey, and we are terribly proud to finally let the rest of the world meet our newest reagent! It is liquid, ready-to-use and has a long open-vial stability of 10 weeks.

If you have any questions or want to evaluate this or any other reagent, please send an email to sales@nordicbiomarker.com.

We are very proud to contribute to SCAPIS (Swedish CArdioPulmonary bioImage Study), a unique study that combines a large cohort with an extensive mapping of participants’ health. We assist with both reagents and instrument expertise in a sub-study of this comprehensive study, whose overall aim is to prevent cardiovascular and pulmonary diseases before they debut.

More than 30,000 women and men in the ages 50 to 64 have been examined with for example ultrasounds, CT scans, spirometry, and blood sampling. The study was started in 2013, and the participants’ medical events will be followed throughout their lives.

SCAPIS is run by six universities and six university hospitals:

• Karolinska Institute and Karolinska University Hospital
• Linköping University and Linköping University Hospital
• Lund University and Skåne University Hospital
• Umeå University and University Hospital of Umeå
• University of Gothenburg and Sahlgrenska University Hospital
• Uppsala University and Uppsala University Hospital

Many publications have already used the SCAPIS data, and many more are to come. Some of the data is open access, some you need to apply for.

We are proud to be part of this important study and will follow it with great interest.

 
Image credit: smart.servier.com