The Drosophila melanogaster Genetic Reference Panel
Mackay, Richards et al., Nature
North Carolina State University's Trudy Mackay and her colleagues present the Drosophila melanogaster Genetic Reference Panel, "a community resource for analysis of population genomics and quantitative traits."
Quest Mentions Its Esoteric Segment. Hint: It’s Still Growing
October 21, 2009
In its third-quarter conference call yesterday, Quest Diagnostics said revenue growth in the period “was driven by continued strong demand for gene-based and esoteric testing including cancer diagnostics,” and that receipts from these tests “continue to grow faster than the overall revenues.”
Yesterday, I wrote that Quest did not mention its esoteric-testing business when it reported its third-quarter financial results. It waited for the conference call to make those remarks.
According to a transcript of the call, Mohapatra said gene-based, esoteric, and anatomic pathology testing accounted for approximately 35 percent of all revenues during the quarter.
CFO Robert Hagemann said gene-based and esoteric testing “tend to grow close to double digits,” while “the rest of the business volume-wise was a little over 1 percent or so” during the quarter.
Mohapatra said “[i]nterestingly, anatomic pathology” — which accounts for the majority of all of its cancer-testing business — “is being supplemented with molecular test such as HPV.” He added that HPV cervical cancer testing increased approximately 10 percent year over year.
Asked by Deutsche Bank Securities analyst Darren Lehrich to “characterize the growth rates that you’re seeing between routine and esoteric in the quarter,” Hagemann said that, “as in the past, the esoteric business is growing much faster than the routine, and we expect that will continue. A lot of this is driven by new tests that are introduced, and … we would expect that sort of pattern will continue as we go forward.”