Strategic Partnership and Licence Agreement unites Fishburne May’s proven FishburneTabs™ platform with Salvivo’s international commercialisation, regulatory, and R&D expertise, extending the technology into new international markets.
Salvivo Limited, the Newcastle-based oral and systemic health monitoring company, and Fishburne May, LLC, of Chapel Hill, North Carolina today announced a Strategic Partnership and Licence Agreement that brings together Fishburne May’s proven FishburneTabs™ platform (FishburneTabs®OH for oral hydration monitoring and FishburneTabs®SC for saliva collection) with Salvivo’s international regulatory, clinical, and commercial expertise. Under the agreement, Salvivo holds exclusive rights across the UK, European Union, and Canada, with options to expand into further territories. Salvivo will lead sales and marketing across these territories, and the R&D on FishburneTabs®SC.
The partnership advances a shared ambition of both Salvivo and Fishburne May: to create for dried saliva what the Dried Blood Spot (DBS) card created for blood: a simple, standardised, sustainable collection format that can underpin patient screening and monitoring, diagnostics, population studies, and pharmaceutical research worldwide.
FishburneTabs®OH, the paper-based oral hydration monitoring tool, is already available through Cardinal Specialty Pharma in the US, and is now being introduced in the UK by Salvivo with an initial focus upon systemic and oral hydration monitoring in care homes. The partnership forms the foundation for a broader oral and systemic health monitoring platform, and includes development of FishburneTabs®SC, a standardised, ambient-stable dried saliva collection format. This extends the platform from hydration monitoring into wider applications spanning pharmaceutical trial sample collection, population health studies, and multi-biomarker monitoring.
The agreement combines Fishburne May’s proven, patented platform, existing US manufacturing, and commercial base with Salvivo’s international regulatory, clinical, and go-to-market expertise, creating a single, aligned route to market on both sides of the Atlantic. For Fishburne May, it brings expertise, expanded R&D capacity, and market reach to take FishburneTabs™ into new international markets and builds a dynamic product pipeline. For Salvivo, it brings an established, patented platform with a proven US commercial footprint. The partnership also builds on Salvivo’s ongoing measurement-science work with the UK’s National Physical Laboratory and its NIHR FAST-funded regulatory programme for FishburneTabs®OH and FishburneTabs®SC.
“This partnership brings us back to why Philip Preshaw and I started Salvivo,” said Dr Dale Athey, CEO and Co-Founder of Salvivo. “We set out to build simple, accessible tools that support oral and systemic health monitoring, for healthcare providers, clinicians, and people managing their own health. As soon as we met Rita and learnt about the FishburneTabs platform, we were blown away by the simple elegance of this device and how it completely aligned with our vision. Formalising our relationship with FishburneMay gives us the foundation to deliver at scale, leveraging our complementary expertise and market reach.”
“We are proud to have forged this agreement with Salvivo, not only because they have built an incredible team with capacity to expand saliva research across dental and medical scientific arenas,” Rita May, CEO, Fishburne May, “but also because of the sensitivity to the clinical environment and patient needs that they embody.”
“We view our new and exciting partnership with Fishburne May as fundamental to our aim of developing simple, sustainable, and highly user-friendly saliva collection and analysis tools that can be used in a wide variety of settings,” said Professor Philip Preshaw, CCO and Co-Founder of Salvivo. “This strategic partnership will enable us to expand from our initial focus on hydration monitoring using the FishburneTabs®OH to development and implementation of a unique saliva and sampling platform, the FishburneTabs®SC, which presents myriad opportunities for supporting oral and systemic health management.”
About Salvivo
Salvivo Limited is a Newcastle upon Tyne-based oral and systemic health monitoring company building FishburneTabs™, the global standard platform for dried saliva collection and analysis. Salvivo’s work is currently supported by Innovate UK and NIHR. www.salvivo.com
About Fishburne May
Fishburne May, LLC, located in Chapel Hill, adjacent to the Research Triangle of North Carolina, was formed by Dr. Coty Fishburne and Rita May, a past executive director of the Sjögrens Syndrome Foundation, initially to address the unrecognised prevalence of dry mouth/xerostomia, but with an eye to creating a device that would always be safe and with minimal impact on the environment.
Dr. Coty Fishburne (1937–2019), a practicing dentist who served on the board of the Medical University of South Carolina, invented the FishburneTabs™ with a vision for a simple, accessible approach to saliva-based monitoring that underpins the platform to this day. As Fishburne May and Salvivo advance from the hydration device to novel collection and analysis opportunities, each step is guided by the memory of Coty, a man of unmatched integrity, curiosity, and boundless spirit.
Photography: Dale Athey, Rita May, and Philip Preshaw London, 4 October 2026