NEW YORK – OpGen said this week that its preliminary revenues for the second quarter of 2022 were approximately $1.0 million, up from $800,000 in Q2 of 2021. Last month, the infectious disease diagnostics company signed its first commercial contract for its Acuitas AMR Gene Panel in the US with a major hospital in the Northeast. In addition, it expanded its distribution agreement with Menarini, which committed to higher annual minimum revenues and purchased the entire pool of installed Unyvero systems in nine European countries at residual fair market value from OpGen subsidiary Curetis. As of June 30, OpGen had about $16.6 million in cash.
Thermo Fisher Scientific said this week that its board of directors on July 7 authorized a quarterly cash dividend of $.30 per common share, payable on Oct. 14 to shareholders of record as of Sept. 15.
Neogen said this week that it has acquired Thai-Neo Biotech, longstanding distributor of its food safety products in Thailand, for an undisclosed amount. Thai-Neo Biotech, based in Bangkok, was founded in 1992 and has been distributing Neogen's products, in particular its mycotoxin assays and other rapid diagnostic test kits, for more than 20 years. Neogen said the acquisition complements its operations in India, China, and Australia and provides an opportunity to grow its aquaculture, genomics, and animal safety businesses.
Separately, Neogen said this week that it plans to combine with the food safety business of 3M in a Reverse Morris Trust transaction. As part of the financing for the merger, Garden SpinCo, a wholly owned subsidiary of 3M, has priced an offering of $350 million aggregate principal amount of 8.625 percent senior notes due 2030 in a private placement at par. The closing of the offering, expected on or about July 20, is not contingent on the completion of the merger. Separately, on June 30, SpinCo entered into a credit agreement consisting of a five-year senior secured loan facility of $650 million and a five-year senior secured revolving facility of $150 million. The credit facilities, together with the notes, represent the financing in connection with the merger.
BioTools Innovator, a Los Angeles-based business incubator, said this week that it has selected 14 companies for its annual program, which provides life science startups with mentorship from industry leaders, funding opportunities, and engagement with advisors and peers. One company will also be awarded a $250,000 prize.
Among the firms selected are CellChorus, which applies artificial intelligence to conduct thousands of single-cell microscopy experiments in parallel; Dalton Bioanalytics, which is using its Omni-MS mass spectrometry platform to digitize the biochemical composition of plasma and other tissues and quantify thousands of molecules in a single assay; DropGenie, which has a high-throughput, low-volume platform that enables genome-wide arrayed CRISPR screens in immune cells; Ferrologix, which enables rapid, high-purity, efficient cell separations on a scalable disposable cartridge; RealSeq Biosciences, which has a small RNA detection technology for real-time profiling of disease markers for diagnosis and treatment; Sequegenics, which offers a cloud platform for genome-wide variant calling analysis using long-read next-gen sequencing data; and xMDDiagnostics, which isolates and enriches tumor cells from biopsies to improve PCR, sequencing, and molecular testing.
Helio Genomics and Fulgent Genetics said this week that the American Medical Association has issued a new Category I Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) Proprietary Laboratory Analyses (PLA) code for the HelioLiver assay for hepatocellular carcinoma. The code will become effective on Oct. 1, 2022.
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.