AboutVivacta was founded in 2005 and completed successive financing rounds in 2006, 2007 and 2009 raising circa $20m. It is located on the Kent Science Park in a purpose-built facility, where a cartridge pilot facility is planned for completion. This will provide licensees with a small-scale manufacture and process development resource.

Piezofilm-based chemical detection technology is wholly owned by Vivacta. Vivacta is free to operate without third-party licensing since it owns a broad and comprehensive range of intellectual property. Vivacta is focused solely on creating value by fully developing this patented piezofilm detection technology. Its detection method is elegant because the rate of binding of an antibody/analyte reaction can be directly monitored by an electrical output. In addition, detection can be carried out in coloured samples, such as whole blood, and is both linear and ultra sensitive. Measuring a voltage rather than hues of colour, or counting photons, provides a number of key benefits over current optical methods, such as photometric, fluorescence or chemiluminescence.

The first commercial application for piezofilm technology is for thyroid diagnosis, following the development of an assay for TSH measurement. This will showcase the technology's sensitivity, dynamic range, precision and speed to result.

With opportunities to apply the technology widely across immunoassay as well as molecular diagnostics markets, the company believes that speed of exploitation is important. To facilitate this, it is focused on partnering with large diagnostic companies.