NEW YORK – Revvity said this week that its Omics laboratory in Manchester, UK, will extract DNA from cord blood samples collected from newborns across England for Genomics England's Generation Study, using Revvity's Chemagic 360 instrument. The study aims to screen up to 100,000 newborns for 200 rare genetic conditions by genomic testing. Revvity previously collaborated with Genomics England on various research projects at a smaller scale, according to a company spokesperson.
German genomic testing company CeGaT said this week that it has contracted with several health insurance programs and companies in the US. The firm, which has a US office in Chicago, is now in network with TriCare East, BCBS Nationwide, Medicare, and Medicaid programs in states including Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Kansas, Colorado, Iowa, Idaho, and Georgia.
Danish multiomics company Cmbio launched this week, bringing together several previously independent companies under one brand: Clinical Microbiomics (Europe), CosmosID (North America), MS-Omics (Europe), DNASense (Europe), and Microba's research services unit (Australia and Asia). The planned rebranding was announced in March when microbiome profiling firm Clinical Microbiomics acquired microbial sequencing service company DNASense, following several other small acquisitions in the prior year by Clinical Microbiomics. The new combined company will offer GxP lab services, advanced bioinformatics, and cutting-edge multiomics solutions, Cmbio said.
Parse Biosciences has added OmapiX to its certified service provider program, the company announced this week. OmapiX, a spatial omics company based in Frederick, Maryland, is offering sequencing services using Parse's single-cell technology worldwide.
Bruker said this week that it has approved payment of a quarterly cash dividend of $.05 per share on the company’s common stock. The dividend will be paid on Dec. 16 to shareholders of record as of Dec. 2.
ChromaTwist said this week that it has won a grant from Innovate UK to fund 70 percent of a £500,000 ($633,000) project to further develop its dyes for bioimaging. A spinout from the University of Birmingham, ChromaTwist has been developing more than 70 UV-excitable dyes using a new class of fluorescent materials. The firm has already developed the dye chemistry to allow for antibody conjugation and has demonstrated its use for flow cytometry and multiphoton microscopy.
QuidelOrtho this week launched a secondary public offering of its common stock on behalf of a selling stockholder, Carlyle Partners VI Cayman Holdings. The firm offered 8,260,183 shares of its common stock at $35.314 per share. QuidelOrtho will receive no proceeds from the sale. In connection with the sale, James Prutow and Robert Schmidt resigned from QuidelOrtho's board of directors on Nov. 21. The resignations were submitted in accordance with the principal stockholder's agreement dated Dec. 22, 2021, between QuidelOrtho and Carlyle.
The German Research Foundation (DFG) is funding a new research training group at the University of Cologne that is focusing on tumor heterogeneity and genomic instability in lung carcinoma with €5.3 million ($5.6 million) over five years. Funding will start April 1, 2025, and support doctoral students in a four-year research program. The new research training group will rely on expertise from the Center for Molecular Medicine at the University of Cologne (ZMMK), the Molecular Pathology Department of Cologne University Hospital, and the Samsung Advanced Institute for Health Sciences & Technology (SAIHST) at Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul, South Korea. The researchers plan to focus on resistance mechanisms, developing clinically relevant models for predicting resistance and clonal evolution and developing preclinical models for testing combination therapies in lung tumors with high-risk genomes.
Mindera Health this week announced a partnership with patient advocacy organization National Psoriasis Foundation to raise awareness of personalized medicine within psoriasis and accelerate adoption of its transcriptomics test, Mind.Px. The test is designed to predict which class of biologic a patient is likely to respond to, based on an analysis of mRNA. The National Psoriasis Foundation provides patients with resources, tools, and educational information to manage psoriasis.
Fluxergy said this week that it will collaborate with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health on the development of molecular testing and sample preparation capabilities that will be incorporated into the company's point-of-care tests for sexually transmitted infections and the causes of vaginosis. The firm said that it will work with the NIAID's Diagnostics Development Services program and NIAID-funded contractors to evaluate the compatibility of the Fluxergy Test Card with rapid nucleic acid extraction and purification methods. Fluxergy said that it intends to develop highly sensitive sample-to-answer molecular tests for Gram-negative bacteria and fungal pathogens that cause sexually transmitted infections and vaginosis.
Biotech firm NeuroKaire said this week that it has received Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments certification from the US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to perform high-complexity clinical testing. The company said that its first offering is a pharmacogenetic assay for 95 variants in 24 genes to guide treatment with 132 drugs for various psychiatric and neurological conditions.
Agilent Technologies said this week that its board of directors has approved a quarterly dividend of $.25 per share of its common stock, payable on Jan. 22, 2025, to shareholders of record on Dec. 31.
Precision for Medicine this week announced a strategic partnership with Agena Bioscience. Under the collaboration, the two organizations have profiled challenging lung tumor samples provided by Precision for Medicine using Agena's Iplex HS Lung Panel on the MassArray platform. They presented results at the Association for Molecular Pathology annual meeting in Vancouver, Canada, this week.
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.