Spanish diagnostics SME developing veterinary disease tests, food allergen biosensors, and DIVA diagnostics for African Swine Fever control.
Gold Standard Diagnostics Madrid (formerly Ingenasa) is a Spanish SME specializing in veterinary diagnostics — developing diagnostic kits, immunological assays, and biosensing tools for animal health and food safety. They design and manufacture tests for detecting animal diseases (including African Swine Fever and parasitic infections in fish), allergens in food products, and zoonotic pathogens. Their work sits at the intersection of immunology, epidemiology, and applied diagnostics, translating research into commercial test kits used by veterinary labs, food producers, and biosecurity agencies across Europe.
Core contributor across SAPHIR (immune response in livestock), ParaFishControl (diagnostic kits for fish parasites), VACDIVA (DIVA diagnostic tests for African Swine Fever), and VetBioNet (animal infectiology).
VACDIVA is their largest single project (EUR 526K) focused on developing DIVA vaccines and companion diagnostic tests for ASF eradication.
ParaFishControl addressed food safety in aquaculture, while SaPher (EUR 473K) developed nanophotonics-based biosensing for simultaneous multi-allergen analysis in food.
VetBioNet and HONOURs both focus on host-switching pathogens, zoonosis, and high-containment research infrastructure for emerging diseases.
SaPher (2020-2023) applies disruptive nanophotonic biosensing to food allergen detection, signaling a move toward advanced sensor platforms.
In their early H2020 period (2015-2017), GSD Madrid focused on traditional veterinary immunology — developing diagnostic kits for fish parasites, strengthening livestock immune response research, and even participating in smart manufacturing systems integration (SMARTER-SI). From 2017 onward, their focus sharpened decisively toward high-impact animal disease control (African Swine Fever diagnostics, BSL3 biosecurity infrastructure) and advanced biosensing technologies for food safety. The shift shows a company moving from broad diagnostic R&D toward two strategic poles: crisis-ready veterinary diagnostics and next-generation sensor platforms.
GSD Madrid is converging on rapid, field-deployable diagnostic tools — expect them to pursue projects combining biosensor hardware with veterinary and food safety applications.
GSD Madrid operates exclusively as a participant, never coordinating, which is typical of a specialized SME that contributes domain-specific diagnostic expertise to larger consortia. With 109 unique partners across 25 countries in just 7 projects, they consistently join large, multi-national research networks (averaging ~16 partners per consortium). This makes them an accessible, low-friction partner — experienced in large-consortium dynamics without the overhead expectations of a coordinator.
Extensive European network spanning 109 unique partners across 25 countries, built through participation in large veterinary and food safety research consortia. Their reach is remarkably broad for an SME of their size, giving them connections across nearly all EU member states.
GSD Madrid is one of few European SMEs that combines in-house diagnostic kit manufacturing with active participation in frontier animal health research. While many diagnostics companies either sell products or do research, GSD Madrid bridges both — they develop assays within EU research projects and have the commercial infrastructure to bring them to market. Their DIVA test expertise for African Swine Fever is particularly strategic given ASF's ongoing spread across Europe and Asia.
