NEW YORK – SD Biosensor and SJL Partners this week closed their acquisition of Meridian Bioscience, which was originally announced in July. Under the terms of the merger, Meridian shareholders have the right to receive $34.00 per share in cash, and Meridian will no longer be traded on the Nasdaq Global Select Market. Meridian will also continue to operate as an independent entity under new ownership, the companies said in a statement.
Oncocyte said this week that it has applied to transfer the listing of its common stock from the Nasdaq Global Market to the Nasdaq Capital Market as suggested in a letter from the Securities and Exchange Commission last year stating that Nasdaq had determined that the company no longer met its minimum bid price. By making the transfer, Oncocyte would gain an additional 180 calendar days to regain compliance. The company said it currently expects that its common stock will continue to trade under the symbol OCX and that it will update investors when it can confirm the timing of the transfer.
Opko Health has purchased nearly 14.3 million additional shares of GeneDx, giving it a total of 94.3 million shares, or about a 12 percent stake in a company it used to own outright, according to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. In another filing, the company disclosed that its largest shareholder, the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, increased its holdings to 123.2 million shares, or 15 percent of the company, with the purchase of 28.6 million shares this week.
GeneDx this week raised $150 million with the sale of 428.6 million new shares. The current GeneDx is the company known until last month as Sema4. Sema4 acquired GeneDx in April 2022 from Opko Health for $623 million in cash, 80 million shares of Sema4 stock, and milestone payments. With Sema4/GeneDx stock sharply declining throughout 2022, Opko Health paid just $.35 per share, or a total of about $5 million, for the new shares last week.
Covington, Kentucky-based Gravity Diagnostics said this week it has received accreditation from the College of American Pathologists based on the results of a recent on-site inspection as part of CAP’s Accreditation Programs. During the accreditation process, CAP inspectors examined the laboratory’s record and quality control procedures for the preceding two years.
Genetic Signatures said this week that its fiscal second quarter revenues declined 12 percent year over year to $4.7 million. The firm’s non-COVID sales increased 49 percent compared to the prior year period and more than quadrupled from the comparable pre-COVID quarter in 2020, which the firm said reflected growth of its underlying business. Genetic Signatures has completed clinical trials toward 510(k) submission of a kit to diagnose protozoa infections using its 3base technology and began trials of a second product as well. The firm ended the quarter with $26.8 million in cash.
UK Biocentre and Eurofins said last week that they have partnered to provide high-throughput research and clinical genomic services. Specifically, the firms will couple UK Biocentre's sample collection, storage, and extraction services with Eurofins Genomics' genomic sequencing capabilities in the UK for large-scale genomics and population health research projects.
The US Department of Health and Human Services’ Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) said this week that it will support the development of Specific Diagnostics’ Specific Reveal Rapid AST System in partnership with BioFire Defense. Specific Diagnostics and BioFire Defense are both subsidiaries of BioMérieux. The contract supports expansion of the Specific Reveal test menu to include panels for gram-positive and gram-negative bacterial, fungal, and streptococcal blood infection samples and isolates. Financial terms of the contract were not disclosed.
Alliance Healthcare Netherlands, part of Conshohocken, Pennsylvania-based pharmaceutical wholesaler Amerisource Bergen, will continue to use OneOme's RightMed pharmacogenomic test, Minneapolis-based OneOme said this week. Alliance Healthcare Netherlands has extended its contract with OneOme by three years, under which it will make the PGx test available at more than 100 pharmacies in the Alphega and Boots networks and online. OneOme was cofounded by Rochester, Minnesota-based Mayo Clinic and biotechnology venture firm Invenshure in 2013.
The White House this week marked the first anniversary of the relaunch of the federal Cancer Moonshot initiative by highlighting efforts that the "reignited" program has supported, including a partnership between the American Society of Clinical Oncology's CancerLinQ and bioinformatics firm Owkin to improve outcomes in metastatic non-small cell lung cancer. The CancerLinQ-Owkin data-sharing collaboration, which started in July, is using artificial intelligence to analyze de-identified real-world clinical and molecular data to identify biomarkers for patients who may be resistant to first-line immunotherapies.
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.