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In Brief This Week: Quest Diagnostics, Agilent Technologies, Meridian Bioscience, and More

NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Quest Diagnostics has completed its acquisitions of the laboratory businesses of Med Fusion and Clear Point. Both are based in Lewisville, Texas and will form Quest’s first national center of excellence in precision diagnostics for oncology.


Agilent Technologies said in a document filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission it has entered into an amendment to a credit agreement originally reached in 2014. Under the amendment, the commitments under a five-year credit facility increased by $300 million to a new total of $1 billion. The original facility was for $400 million. In 2015, the commitments under the facility increased by $300 million.


Meridian Bioscience announced this week that it has opened a wholly foreign owned enterprise (WFOE) in Beijing, China called Meridian Bioscience Beijing. Meridian opened a representative office in Beijing in 2015, and this office has now been transitioned to a WFOE to better serve the firm's Chinese customers. Through the WFOE, Meridian said it now has a local sales, marketing, and distribution function for research and IVD customers in China.


Era7 this week announced the launch of its new genomics laboratory, Genome7. It integrates automation technologies with powerful sequencing platforms and advanced bioinformatics pipelines specifically designed for genomics, metagenomics, and transcriptomics NGS projects. Genome7 Laboratory is based in Spain and offers a wide range of NGS services, including human genomics with a special focus on cancer, bacterial genomics, microbiome analysis, immunogenomics, and various RNA-seq applications.


DermTech said that the American Medical Association has granted the firm category 1, tier 2 molecular pathology procedure codes related to its test for detecting melanoma-related gene expression. The firm has secured the CPT code for LINC and PRAME, the primary genes included in DermTech’s noninvasive biopsy and gene expression test for skin cancer. The genes will be added to the approved list for CPT code 81401 by the AMA as of July 1.


Source Molecular said this week that it will expand its test services, products, and data analysis and project platform following a $1.6 million Series A funding round. Source Molecular provides microbial source tracking analysis to state and federal oversight agencies, water utilities, conservation groups, and industrial and commercial facilities with stormwater permits. The company said it will increase its sales force to complement the improvement of its services and development of new products. It will also expand its laboratory team to increase productivity and generate income through research grants.


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.