NEW YORK – LifeSpan BioSciences said this week that it has acquired Everest Biotech, which specializes in the production of antigen affinity purified goat polyclonal antibodies. The acquisition will expand LSBio's offering of more than 500,000 monoclonal and polyclonal primary antibodies, the company said. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
Invitae announced this week that it has closed its acquisition of Jungla, a company with an AI platform for classifying and interpreting genetic variants. Invitae issued an aggregate of 1.4 million shares of its common stock and $14.9 million in cash to Jungla's former security holders. Around $520,000 in cash and 203,129 shares of Invitae’s common stock are subject to a hold back to satisfy any indemnification obligations that may arise. In addition, Invitae said it may pay approximately $15 million, mostly in common stock, if Jungla meets certain performance milestones within 24 months of the closing.
Integrated DNA Technologies (IDT) said this week that it has established a preferred sequencing provider program and has selected the McDonnell Genome Institute (MGI) at Washington University School of Medicine as its first partner for the program. IDT said it has been working with MGI for several years, incorporating feedback and input from the institute into the development of several of the company's sequencing reagent products, and plans to continue to do so.
HTG Molecular said this week that its previously launched HTG EdgeSeq DLBCL Cell of Origin Assay and EdgeSeq Lung Fusions research-use-only assay can now be used on Thermo Fisher Scientific's Ion Torrent Ion S5 next-generation sequencing platform. The EdgeSeq DLBCL Cell of Origin Assay uses a gene expression-based classification system to identify the molecular subtype of diffuse large B-cell lymphomas (DLBCL). According to HTG, the EdgeSeq Lung Fusions RUO assay measures and analyzes mRNA ALK gene fusion events in FFPE lung tumor specimens from patients previously diagnosed with non-small cell lung cancer.
UK-based pre-clinical and clinical research services company Epistem said this week that it has completed an agreement with Hubrecht Organoid Technology to offer an increased range of multi-species organoid models to customers. Specifically, Hubrechts organoid models will enable Epistem to offer services focused on identifying off-target or off-tissue intestinal toxicities associated with various therapeutics.
Evogene said this week that it has amended its corn disease research collaboration with Bayer's Crop Science Division to refocus on the identification of genome editing targets for evaluation against a broad range of corn diseases. The partners amended the collaboration after achieving positive results in initial studies. Evogene will use its Computational Predictive Biology platform to identify the required edits to improve disease resistance in corn. The edits will be based on Evogene-discovered genes and other accumulated knowledge achieved in the collaboration, and will focus on altering gene expression or function. Any promising targets will be pursued by Bayer's in-house team for validation, Evogene said.
Novacyt said this week it has completed the sale of its clinical laboratory business to Cambridge Pathology for a total consideration of £400,000 ($499,000). The sale allows Novacyt to focus on its core businesses, Primerdesign and Lab21. The sale of the business was announced in December 2018. The clinical lab business posted €765,000 in revenues in 2018.
Quest Diagnostics said this week that LSI Medience and Strand Life Sciences have joined the Global Diagnostics Network, a working group of diagnostic labs collaborating on enhanced diagnostics to improve healthcare delivery. LSI Medience is headquartered in Tokyo and provides diverse healthcare solutions, including IVD development and clinical testing. It was formerly known as Mitsubishi Chemical Medience. Strand Life Sciences is a clinical research and diagnostics company based in Bengaluru, India. It acquired Quest's India medical diagnostics business in December.
Other members of GDN include Al Borg Medical Laboratories, Dasa, GC Labs, Healius, KingMed Diagnostics, and Synlab.
In Brief This Week is a selection of news items that may be of interest to our readers but had not previously appeared on GenomeWeb.