NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Alere announced this week that it will initiate a voluntary withdrawal of its anti-coagulation monitoring INRatio and INRatio2 PT/INR Monitoring System. The company said it is working with the US Food and Drug Administration to determine the most appropriate timing to discontinue the product, and will provide guidance on transitioning patients to an alternate product.
PositiveID this week announced highlights of its business from the first half of 2016. The firm demonstrated that results from its Firefly Dx benchtop prototype are faster and as accurate as lab-based testing; successfully detected Zika virus on the Firefly Dx using assay partner GenArraytion's Aedes Aegypti MultiFlex PCR test; reported Q1 2016 revenue of $1.7 million, up from $100,000 in Q1 2015; and shipped a mobile lab worth more than $700,000 to a customer. The company also appointed Benedikt von Braunmuhl to its board of advisors to assist in the commercialize of Firefly Dx.
Danaher said this week that it will redeem all of its $500 million aggregate principal amount of 5.625 percent senior notes due 2018, $750 million aggregate principal amount of 5.40 percent senior notes due 2019, and $600 million aggregate principal amount of 3.900 percent senior notes due 2021. The redemption date will be Aug. 15, and Danaher intends to fund the redemptions using a portion of the cash proceeds it received from Fortive in connection with Danaher's spin-off of Fortive in July.
GeneAdviser announced this week that it has signed a new partnership with TGLClinical to offer clinical grade testing to investigate mutations in the BRCA1/BRCA2 genes. TGLclinical is a part of the Joint Clinical Academic Unit of the Division of Genetics & Epidemiology at the Institute of Cancer Research and the Clinical Cancer Genetics Unit at the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust. The partnership falls within the scope of GeneAdviser's plan to continue expanding its ordering platform, where doctors worldwide can search for genetic tests from a growing network of clinically accredited laboratories, the firm said.
Exact Sciences announced this week that the National Committee for Quality Assurance has proposed adding the company's colorectal cancer screening test Cologuard to the 2017 Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set (HEDIS) quality measures. More than 90 percent of health plans in the US measure quality based on HEDIS, the company said. The CMS Star Ratings, which guides quality measures for Medicare Advantage plans, are also affected by HEDIS. The proposal to broaden the colorectal cancer screening measure is subject to a 30-day public comment period.
MiniPCR said this week that Genes in Space has named 15-year-old Julian Rubinfien the winner of its second annual competition challenging students in grades seven through 12 to design an experiment to solve a real-life space exploration problem through DNA analysis. The winning experiment will be conducted aboard the International Space Station using miniPCR technology. Rubinfien has proposed studying genetic processes that may lead to accelerated aging in space by measuring telomere lengths. The experiment uses a PCR-based assay and human organoids to measure telomeres on the ISS, the company said.
In Brief This Week is a selection of news items that may be of interest to our readers but had not previously appeared on the GenomeWeb site.