LBT Innovations Limited (ASX: LBT) shares are catching the eye on Wednesday.
At one stage today, the ASX AI healthcare stock was up as much as 170% to 3.8 cents.
The medical technology company's shares have given back most of these gains since then but remains up 80% to 2.5 cents.
Why is this ASX AI healthcare stock rocketing?
Investors were scrambling to buy the company's shares today after it announced the successful completion of primary validation for the Automated Plate Assessment System (APAS) PharmaQC product.
The company's APAS product uses artificial intelligence and machine learning software to automate the imaging, analysis, and interpretation of microbiology culture plates.
The completion of this milestone represents the final step in the product development and technology commercialisation with global healthcare giant AstraZeneca (NASDAQ: AZN).
As a result, AstraZeneca will now undertake an internal secondary validation of the system within its own manufacturing processes. Completion of AstraZeneca's secondary validation is anticipated in the third quarter of calendar year 2024.
If that is successful, then it could be only a matter of time until the ASX AI healthcare stock is generating revenue.
'Incredibly important'
The company's CEO and managing director, Brent Barnes, was very pleased with the news and believes the technology is important to the industry. He said:
Evidence based automation is incredibly important in the biopharmaceutical industry. The completion of our primary validation is a valuable asset to the Company. We expect this data to build confidence in our technology and assist customers with their adoption of APAS PharmaQC.
Many customers we've spoken to over the past 6 months gave positive feedback on our technological approach and we are looking forward to sharing our primary validation data with them. We have set ourselves an ambitious commercialisation schedule for 2024 and expect the customer qualification pipeline to accelerate as we present our APAS PharmaQC technology at a number of key global conferences.
