NEW YORK – Illumina said this week in its form 10-Q filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission that it has fully exited its i3 campus in San Diego. The firm also said it has appealed the European Commission's July decision that Illumina breached the EU Merger Regulation and related fines of approximately €432 million ($468.5 million).
10x Genomics said this week that it has informed employees of a proposal to close its Stockholm-based R&D center by April 2024. "We will now begin consulting with the employee unions in Sweden before a final decision is made," a 10x spokesperson said in an email. The center combined teams acquired from Cartana and Spatial Transcriptomics, both spinouts from the Science for Life Laboratory. In a post on LinkedIn, 10x Cofounder and CSO Ben Hindson suggested that closing the lab would eliminate 26 jobs.
Thermo Fisher Scientific said this week that its board of directors has authorized the repurchase of $4 billion of shares of its common stock in the open market or in negotiated transactions. The authorization has no expiration date, Thermo Fisher said, and will replace the company's existing repurchase authorization, of which $1 billion was remaining.
Natera said this week that it has inked a deal with Merck focused on real-world data for oncology research and drug development. For its part of the deal, Natera will bring its de-identified real-world database, which contains both clinical and genomic data from 100,000 patients with early- and late-stage cancers. These patients have all undergone testing with Natera's personalized molecular residual disease (MRD) test, Signatera. Most patients included in the database also have longitudinal monitoring data, which offers Merck insight on how these patients respond to treatment over time on the molecular level.
Complete Genomics said this week that it plans to open a $3.2 million manufacturing facility within its headquarters in San Jose, California. Scheduled to open in March 2024, the facility will give the firm access to a US-based supply chain, "translating into faster delivery times for its next-generation sequencing products," the company said in a statement. Complete Genomics said the new facility will house its research and development, engineering, and International Organization for Standardization (ISO) manufacturing operations.
Lucid Diagnostics said this week that its third quarter revenues rose nearly tenfold to $783,000 from $76,000 as the company performed 2,575 EsoGuard Esophageal DNA Tests in the quarter, up 137 percent from the year-ago period. The New York-based molecular diagnostics firm, a majority-owned subsidiary of PavMed, reported a net loss of $14.2 million, or $.34 per share, compared to a net loss of $14.3 million, or $.39 per share, a year ago. The firm reported an adjusted loss per share of $.22. The firm noted that during Q3 there was a substantial increase in clinical utility data to support payor coverage for EsoGuard, with results from three studies (CLUE, PREVENT Registries, and SAFD Study) showing 99 percent to 100 percent concordance with existing methods in more than 1,500 patients. Lucid finished the quarter with $24.1 million in cash and cash equivalents.
MDxHealth this week said it has completed a share consolidation via a 1-for-10 reverse stock split. As a result, the number of the firm's shares on the Euronext Brussels exchange were reduced to 27,288,093 shares from 272,880,936 shares. MDxHealth said last month that it would transition from a dual listing of its American Depositary Shares on the Nasdaq and its ordinary shares on Euronext Brussels to a single listing on the Nasdaq. The transition involved the 1-for-10 reverse stock split of its ordinary shares, while each ADS would be represented by one new share.
OpGen this week reported third quarter revenues of $699,022 compared to $448,713 in the year-ago period. The company implemented cash management initiatives in the quarter, including reducing headcount at its US operations, and signed a preferred stock purchase agreement with a potential strategic investor. Its Curetis and Ares Genetics subsidiaries are currently subject to bankruptcy proceedings. Net loss was $4.06 million, or $.46 per share, compared to a loss of $14.10, or $5.92 in Q3 2022. The company ended the quarter with $292,642 in cash and cash equivalents.
Quantum-Si has tapped Bulgaria's ELTA 90 to distribute its Platinum next-generation protein sequencing instrument and consumables in Southeast Europe. Guilford, Connecticut-based Quantum-Si launched Platinum late last year. The benchtop device uses amino acid-specific probes to identify single protein molecules including post-translational modifications. The company booked its first revenues from the platform in the first quarter of this year.
Mainz Biomed said this week that it has closed its previously announced direct offering with several institutional investors to purchase $5.0 million of its ordinary shares and warrants. The combined effective purchase price for each ordinary share and associated warrant was $1.20. Titan Partners Group was the sole placement agent for the offering.
Agilent Technologies this week said its board of directors declared a quarterly dividend of $.24 per common share payable Jan. 24, 2024, to all shareholders of record as of the close of the market on Jan. 2.
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.