NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Agilent this week announced that it has formed a collaboration with the University of Southern California Michelson Center for Convergent Bioscience to create an Agilent Center of Excellence in Biomolecular Characterization. The center will be housed in Michelson Hall, which opened at the university in October 2017, with the aim of bringing together scientists and engineers to work together on multidisciplinary approaches to improve healthcare through new drugs, diagnostics, and medical devices.
Agilent also said this week that it has partnered with enterprise platform Science Exchange to promote access to Agilent-enabled services to the research community worldwide. The new Agilent-Science Exchange portal will allow Agilent customers to search and request a quote for Agilent-enabled research services directly from Agilent.com. Science Exchange's verification program will be used to qualify each listed provider, and the platform will incorporate data security measures to protect consumer privacy. Agilent and Science Exchange will co-market the new portal beginning this month.
Liquid biopsy company Angle this week reported interim financial results for the six months ended Oct. 31, 2017. The firm's revenues for H2 2017 were £200,000, equivalent to its revenues in H1 2017. Angle also reported a loss from continuing operations of £3.4 million, and a cash balance of £4.3 million as of Oct. 31. The firm further said it now has an installed base of more than 145 Parsortix instruments deployed worldwide, up from 120 installed instruments in H1 2017, and completed more than 39,000 blood separations in the second half of the year.
Exosome Diagnostics this week executed an agreement to provide its ExoDx Prostate test through FedMed, a PPO with 40 million members in the US. ExoDx is a prostate cancer risk assessment test, and is now available to FedMed's members as a covered benefit through its payor network.
Medidata and Syapse said this week that they have partnered to jointly develop products to improve patient access to oncology clinical trials. Under the terms of the agreement, the companies will initially build products to assist trial sponsors in designing eligibility criteria, identify community health systems as trial sites, and enable oncologists to easily identify patients for enrollment into trials.
Millennium Health said this week that it has received credentials to operate as a laboratory under the Medi-Cal program. Physicians can now order Millennium's clinical services for the 2.5 million fee-for-service members in California's Medicaid program, including its Millennium UDT for urine drug testing, its Millennium OFT for oral fluid testing, and DxWound, a DNA test offered by Millennium brand CogenDx. The company said last week it received CAP accreditation for DxWound.
Contract research organization Reaction Biology announced this week that it has launched a new division to provide ion-channel discovery services. RBC said it has completed an acquisition of ion-channel assets from a Pennsylvania-based firm, has retained their senior scientist personnel with experience in electrophysiology, and has begun providing services.
In Brief This Week is a selection of news items that may be of interest to our readers but had not previously appeared on the GenomeWeb site.