U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Grants Patent to PositiveID Corporation for Portable Pathogen Detection

PositiveID Corporation PSID announced today the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has granted the Company Patent No. 8,053,214, "Apparatus and Method for Extracting and Analyzing an Analyte from a Fluid-Based Sample." The patent was awarded to PositiveID's MicroFluidic Systems subsidiary, which maintains a strong and growing patent portfolio, the targeted applications of which are biological sample collection processing and detection from environmental samples and clinical samples. William J. Caragol, Chief Executive Officer of PositiveID, said, "This latest U.S. Patent demonstrates the vast array of derivative technology stemming from M-BAND, a system developed under a decade of funding received from DHS exceeding $35 million. We believe M-BAND continues to be well positioned as a proven technology to compete for DHS' Third Generation BioWatch program, a $3 billion program to identify pathogens in the air as part of an early warning system designed to thwart a potential terrorist attack." The Company has developed a series of miniaturized, portable microfluidic cartridges for biological sample processing and detection derived from its Microfluidics-based Bioagent Networked Detector (M-BAND), which was developed under funding from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. M-BAND is a bioaerosol monitor with fully integrated systems with sample collection, processing and detection modules, used for airborne pathogen detection. The Company's microfluidic cartridges have potential applications ranging from differential extraction cartridges, sample processing and amplification for biodefense applications, to clinical sample processing and detection.