NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Becton Dickinson announced this week that it has agreed to sell 50.1 percent of its respiratory solutions business to funds advised by global private equity firm Apax Partners. The new company will include all business lines within BD's respiratory solutions business including respiratory diagnostics, and will have estimated annual revenue of approximately $900 million. BD will retain 49.9 percent of the company. The transaction values the entire business today at nearly $500 million, and is expected to close in late fiscal year 2016 or early fiscal year 2017. BD said it plans to use the proceeds to repurchase shares.
NovellusDx announced that its facility received quality certification ISO 13485:2003 from the Standard Institute of Israel for the development of diagnostic solutions for personalized medicine. The certification will support the company’s effort to develop and manufacture IVD medical devices, and provide LDT services alongside its CLIA service lab.
Biocept said this week that it has signed an agreement with preferred provider organization network FedMed to provide its members with improved network access to Biocept's proprietary Target Selector liquid biopsy testing.
The Medical University of Bialystok in Poland announced this week that it has signed a three-year renewable agreement with Indivumed to establish a cancer database comprised of molecular and clinical data on solid tumor tissue to be collected within the university's hospital network. The partners will begin recruiting patients and physicians and will collect tumor tissues and associated liquids and clinical data for pancreatic, colorectal, lung, breast, and other cancers.
ASCO announced this week that it has begun recruiting patients with advanced cancer for its first clinical trial, the Targeted Agent and Profiling Utilization Registry (TAPUR) study. The trial will evaluate molecularly targeted cancer drugs and collect data on clinical outcomes with the aim of finding additional uses for these drugs outside of indications already approved by the FDA. The trial will initially enroll participants at 30 clinical sites located in Michigan, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Idaho, and will expand to other areas of the country by the end of 2016. Eligible participants include those who have an advanced solid tumor, multiple myeloma, or B cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma who are no longer benefitting from standard anti-cancer treatments or for whom no acceptable standard treatment is available.
Bioo Scientific said this week that it has received ISO 13485 certification for its NEXTflex Cell Free DNA-Seq Kits for the construction of libraries for cell free DNA sequencing. The NEXTflex Cell Free DNA-Seq Kit is optimized for whole genome sequencing of cell-free DNA, 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.