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In Brief This Week: Bruker, Qiagen, Prenetics, CellChorus, T2 Biosystems, More

NEW YORK – Bruker said this week it has formed a new division, Bruker Spatial Biology. It brings together the company’s NanoString Technologies, Canopy Biosciences, and Bruker Spatial Genomics businesses and will offer a suite of spatial biology instruments, assays, software, data analytics, and CRO services. They include NanoString’s GeoMx, CosMx, and AtoMx technologies along with Canopy Biosciences’ CellScape. 


Qiagen said this week that it has expanded a strategic collaboration with Neo4j, a data analytics and graph database management system developer. The collaboration will enable Neo4j's Graph Database and Graph Data Science capabilities to integrate more extensively with the Qiagen Biomedical Knowledge Base product line in ways that complement each company’s biopharmaceutical portfolio. 


Prenetics this week reported second quarter revenues of $5.9 million, down from $6.5 million in Q2 2023. Net loss for the quarter was $11.5 million, or $.88 per share, compared to a net loss of $20.4 million, or $2.06 per share, in the year-ago quarter. As of June 30, the Hong Kong-based company held $41.2 million in cash and cash equivalents. This month, Prenetics plans to launch a health and wellness brand named IM8 in the US. It continues to expect more than $33 million in revenues for full-year 2024. The company noted that Insighta, its 2023 joint venture with Chinese University of Hong Kong scientist Dennis Lo that focuses on early cancer detection, had a cash balance of $80.5 million as of June 30. That company commenced a 1,500-person clinical trial for early liver cancer detection in September. 


CellChorus and the University of Houston said this week that the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) has awarded them a $2.5 million small business technology transfer (STTR) fast-track grant to develop their Time-lapse Imaging Microscopy In Nanowell Grids (TIMING) platform for dynamic, label-free, single-cell analysis. The grant consists of a $350,000 Phase I grant that is currently underway, followed by a milestone-based, two-year $2.1 million Phase II grant. The award will support the development of an integrated software system for dynamic single-cell analysis of cells that are not fluorescently labeled. It will be based on AI and machine-learning models trained on tens of millions of cell images. Individual cells of interest can be retrieved from the platform for downstream analysis, such as transcriptional or proteomic profiling. 


T2 Biosystems and PRxcision said this week they will comarket T2 Bio's rapid, direct-from-blood diagnostics and PRxcision's platform. The deal aims to deliver a "comprehensive approach" to managing bloodstream infections and sepsis by providing hospitals the ability to rapidly identify pathogens directly from blood in hours, compared to days with other methods, along with real-time insights and information. As a result, clinicians can receive information to guide treatment, the companies said. A T2 Bio spokesman declined to disclose the terms of the deal. 


Foresight Diagnostics filed a motion this week to dismiss the trade secret lawsuit brought against it by Roche. In the motion, Foresight said that Roche failed to show any plausible trade secrets related to the case and failed to provide plausible factual allegations that the alleged trade secrets have independent economic value. It also said that the trade secret claims against Foresight should be dismissed because Roche has failed to allege any acts of misappropriation by Foresight. 


Flatiron Health and Lifebit Biotech said this week that they are expanding their collaboration to allow researchers in Japan access to Flatiron's database of real-world data. Lifebit's federated trusted research environment (TRE) technology will allow authorized researchers access to and use of Flatiron's data without removing data from the TRE to protect the privacy and security of sensitive clinical and genomic data. 


Naveris this week said Blue Shield of California began providing coverage for the NavDx test for tumor tissue modified viral HPV DNA as of July 2, 2024. Naveris markets the test for detection of HPV-driven cancers before treatment, during treatment, and after treatment. 


The Association for Diagnostics & Laboratory Medicine (ADLM), along with the National Independent Laboratory Association, American Association of Bioanalysts, American Society for Clinical Pathology, American Society for Microbiology, and Infectious Disease Society of America, has filed an amicus brief this week in the American Clinical Laboratory Association’s (ACLA) suit against the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and its final rule on laboratory-developed tests. The brief supports ACLA’s position that the FDA rule exceeds the agency’s statutory authority and asks the court to strike it down. 


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.