NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) — Ambry Genetics announced this week that it has opened a state-of-the-art, 65,000-square-foot "Super Lab" in Aliso Viejo, California. The company said its new fully automated lab is four times larger than any of its other facilities, and will initially process triple the number of patient samples every day, working up to a nine-fold increase over time. Ambry also said it expects to cut turnaround times for genetic tests and panels, improve testing integrity, and increase quality control. It will run 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
ArcherDX announced this week that reference laboratory PathGroup is the first certified service provider of the new Archer CSP Program. The program enables certified providers to offer Archer assays to their customers, the company said.
EpiCypher announced this week that it has expanded its global distribution network. In 2015, the bioscience company added five distributors — one each in Canada, India, and South Korea, and two in China — to the 11 distributors the company already had outside the US, including nine in Europe.
The Pistoia Alliance announced this week that it has awarded $15,000 each to Repositive and Novaseek Research, the winners of the Pistoia Alliance President's Startup Challenge. The two companies have developed technologies that support the Alliance's purpose of supporting innovation in life sciences R&D, the Alliance said. Repositive develops tools to improve access to genomic research data, and Novaseek provides clinically annotated human biospecimens and clinical data. In addition to the cash prize, both companies will also receive six months of mentorship from an unnamed senior industry figure who is a member of the Alliance.
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.