NEW YORK – Laboratory Corporation of America recently disclosed in its Form 10-K that on Feb. 7, 2022, the company was served with a subpoena duces tecum issued by the Department of Justice in Camden, New Jersey, requiring the production of documents related to noninvasive prenatal screening tests. Burlington, North Carolina-based Labcorp said it will cooperate with the DOJ.
QuantuMDx said this week that its SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR test has been approved under the UK Health Security Agency's Medical Devices Regulations 2021, following the approval of the firm's Q-POC SARS-CoV-2 assay last month. Both tests are now available in the UK as well as in continental Europe.
PerkinElmer recently disclosed in its Form 10-K that it paid a total of $6.2 billion for the acquisitions of eight businesses in 2021. They include the $5.7 billion purchase of BioLegend, the $590.9 million acquisition of Oxford Immunotec, the $267.3 million buy of Nexcelom Bioscience, and the acquisition of five other businesses for a combined $331 million.
The Waltham, Massachusetts-based company also said that during Q4 of 2021, it reduced its headcount by 31 employees related to a restructuring plan to realign resources to emphasize growth initiatives. PerkinElmer took charges related to the workforce reduction of $77,000 in its Diagnostics segment and $3.1 million in its Discovery and Analytical Solutions segment during the quarter. Additionally, it took a $150,000 charge related to the closure of excess facilities in its DAS segment in Q4.
Bruker recently disclosed in its Form 10-K that on Feb. 15, 2022, it completed a $12 million minority investment in proteomics diagnostics firm PrognomIQ.
Pathomics Health said this week that it has expanded its lab operations into Singapore, setting up clinical diagnostics and research testing facilities in that country. In 2021, the company became Qiagen’s preferred outsourcing lab for next-generation sequencing testing in Asia. The firm also said that it is collaborating with Qiagen to expand infectious disease testing, noting that the lab in Singapore will provide clinical diagnostic testing for infectious diseases using Qiagen’s QiaStat system and its respiratory syndromic pathogen panel and gastrointestinal pathogen panel, QuantiFeron for latent tuberculosis diagnosis, and the high-throughput QiaSymphony workflow for other infectious diseases. The lab is also offering GenScript’s cPass SARS-CoV-2 Neutralization Antibody Detection test.
Olink said this week that Gothenburg, Sweden-based TATAA Biocenter will begin offering the Olink Explore 3072 proteomics platform as part of its omics services suite, complementing its offerings in genomics and transcriptomics. In a statement, Mikael Kubista, TATAA's founder and CEO, said the center plans to target the Explore 3072 service to its pharma customers and to use the platform for European Union-funded efforts including the PainFACT project looking at molecular mechanisms of pain-related disorders and the OPTOMICS project combining imaging and multiomic measurements to improve diabetes care.
Prenosis said this week that it has received an investment of undisclosed amount from Pace Healthcare Capital, bringing its total amount of funding raised to date to more than $20 million. Based in Chicago, the firm trains machine learning algorithms on biological and clinical data to create acute disease maps and develops tools to improve patient care by providing information about treatment pathways for individual patients.
Leidos said this week that it has been awarded a contract by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to provide biomedical preclinical and development capabilities. The seven-year contract has an approximate value of up to $545 million and will be funded by the NIAID, the National Institutes of Health, and the Department of Health and Human Services. Leidos will provide NIAID with a suite of services, including chemistry manufacturing and control, nonclinical research, analytics, bioinformatics, computational biology, biostatistical services, and basic as well as mechanistic studies. It will also utilize its expertise in machine learning, natural language processing, high-level analytics, analytic programming languages, and analysis methods.
Fulgent Genetics said this week that its board of directors has authorized a $250 million share repurchase program, which will be funded using working capital. The firm had approximately 30 million shares of common stock outstanding as of March 7.
The Foundation Fighting Blindness said this week that it is partnering with InformedDNA and ProQR Therapeutics to identify patients with Usher syndrome or non-syndromic retinitis pigmentosa who have mutations in exon 13 of the USH2A gene for enrollment in clinical trials run by ProQR. FFR is using its My Retina Tracker registry to identify patients with this type of mutation, who will then be able to speak with an InformedDNA board-certified genetic counselor at no cost to determine their study eligibility.
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.