Phadia develops, manufactures and markets blood test systems to support the clinical diagnosis and monitoring of allergy, asthma and autoimmune diseases.
Three scientists working at Uppsala University Hospital, Leif Wide, Rolf Axén and Jerker Porath, then presented their ideas to use Pharmacia's separation medium Sephadex as the solid phase in immunodiagnostics tests and proposed a collaboration with the company for the commercial development.
In 1967 immunoglobulin E, or IgE, was discovered by two separate research teams, by Teruko and Kimishige Ishizaka in the US and by Gunnar Johansson and Hans Bennich [sv] at Uppsala University Hospital.
This led to the ground-breaking product Phadebas RAST, which established the leading position that Phadia still maintains in the area of allergy testing.
[citation needed] Since the discovery of IgE in 1967, Phadia has pioneered the development of in vitro test systems for allergy (immunoglobulin E).