NEW YORK – PerkinElmer said this week that it expects to report year-over-year third quarter revenue growth of 35 percent on a reported basis, and revenues growth of 33 percent on an organic basis. The Waltham, Massachusetts-based firm said the uptick was driven by continued better-than-expected demand for its SARS-CoV-2 testing products as demand for RT-PCR, RNA extraction systems and kits, and automated liquid handling instruments remained "robust." SARS-CoV-2-related products contributed about $280 million to revenues during the third quarter, PerkinElmer said. The company is scheduled to announce its financial results for the quarter after the close of the market on Oct. 28.
Global Genes and the Rady Children's Institute for Genomic Medicine (RCIGM) said this week that they have partnered to develop a support network for families with gene-based diagnosed rare diseases. Approximately 80 percent of rare diseases have identified genetic origins, many caused by defects in a single gene. About half of known rare diseases affect children and 30 percent of children with rare diseases die before the age of five years, the partners said. Through Project Baby Bear, RCIGM has diagnosed 35 rare conditions that occur in less than one in 1 million births. The institute said its partnership with Global Genes will help provide patients with rare diseases with information on genomic medicine support services.
In a fiscal-year 2020 proxy statement filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission this week, Myriad Genetics said its fiscal year will now end on December 31, instead of June 30. Myriad will file a 10-K annual report for the six-month transition period between July 1 and Dec. 31, 2020. The company's 2021 fiscal year will span from Jan. 1 to Dec. 31. Additionally, the company said that it has added six new members to its board of directors for the past year, and announced the retirement of three members.
Oncimmune Holdings this week announced it has inked an agreement with Cedars-Sinai to provide antibody profiling of disease biomarkers in COVID-19 samples. Under the terms of the agreement, Cedars-Sinai will provide Oncimmune with serum samples from staff exposed to or infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The project will identify biomarkers of COVID-19 and compare these to a control set of healthy patient samples provided by Oncimmune. The project will initially profile the antibodies of staff working at Cedars-Sinai hospitals to better understand the effects of the disease in healthcare workers.
Last week, Oncimmune announced its participation in IMmunity Profiling of pAtients with COVID-19 for Therapy and Triage (IMPACTT), a program to develop and validate an infectious disease panel designed to predict COVID-19 disease severity and therapeutic response. The collaboration with Cedars-Sinai is the first commercial project to result from the IMPACTT program.
MiR Scientific said this week that its miR Sentinel PCC4 Assay has received Breakthrough Device Designation from the US Food and Drug Administration. The prostate cancer test measures small, noncoding RNAs from a urine sample from age-eligible men and uses the expression level of the RNAs to classify patients by risk.
The firm's proprietary algorithm determines if a patient will likely have no molecular evidence of prostate cancer, or is likely in a low-, intermediate-, or high-risk group. The test will be commercialized as a laboratory developed test in the US, miR Scientific said, adding that it could reduce mortality and decrease the number of hospitalizations and physician visits, as well as reducing recovery time. Validation data for the test was recently published in the Journal of Urology.
NeoGenomics said this week that it aims to launch a research laboratory in 2021, in partnership with the new lab PPD in Suzhou, China. The firm expects the lab to support Greater China-focused clinical trials and testing for global and local pharmaceutical companies. NeoGenomics will offer pharma research services, including early translational and clinical research trial studies supporting global pharmaceutical initiatives.
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.