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In Brief This Week: MDxHealth; Agendia; Pressure Biosciences; and More

NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – MDxHealth announced this week that its ConfirmMDx for Prostate Cancer test has been granted a Category I MAAA Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) code by the American Medical Association. The CPT code will help the company with reimbursement for the test, MDxHealth said.


Agendia said this week that its MammaPrint 70-Gene Breast Cancer Recurrence Assay has also been granted a Category I, MAAA CPT code by the AMA.


Pressure BioSciences said this week that it has closed a $2 million line of credit with an unnamed investor. The investor has purchased a promissory note in the aggregate principal amount of up to $2 million due and payable either on Oct. 28, 2017 or on the seventh business day after the closing of a qualified offering, whichever comes first. The company has also received its initial $250,000 advance pursuant to the note, and has issued a five-year common stock purchase warrant to the investor to buy 625,000 shares of the company's common stock at an exercise price of $.40 per share.


Caris Life Sciences announced this week that it has designated the West Virginia University Cancer Institute as a center of excellence site in the Caris Centers of Excellence for Precision Medicine Network. The WVU Cancer Institute will now actively participate in the development of standards of care and best practices for integrating and utilizing molecular profiling in oncology practice, while also working toward adoption and patient access to personalized medicine in the clinic. The Institute will also have access to Caris' multiple-technology tumor profiling service.


Researchers at NRGene and the Kazusa DNA Research Institute in Japan have sequenced for the first time the genome of a commercially grown strawberry. The octoploid, heterozygous strawberry genome was assembled using reads produced on Illumina sequencing technology and assembled with NRGene's cloud-based DeNovoMAGIC 3.0 software package.


Fulgent Genetics reported this week that its third quarter revenues rose 72 percent to $5 million from $2.9 million a year ago. The company completed its initial public offering of 4.2 million shares of common stock on Oct. 4, raising approximately $36.3 million. The firm recorded a net loss of $1 million for the quarter, and ended Q3 with $8.2 million in cash. For Q4, Fulgent expects $5.8 million to $6.2 million in revenues, representing a 107 percent increase at the midpoint over Q4 2015.


ADS Biotec announced this week that it has acquired Genial Laboratory Automation, the instruments division of Genial Genetics. The acquisition strengthens ADS' product portfolio, 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.

The Scan

Positive Framing of Genetic Studies Can Spark Mistrust Among Underrepresented Groups

Researchers in Human Genetics and Genomics Advances report that how researchers describe genomic studies may alienate potential participants.

Small Study of Gene Editing to Treat Sickle Cell Disease

In a Novartis-sponsored study in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers found that a CRISPR-Cas9-based treatment targeting promoters of genes encoding fetal hemoglobin could reduce disease symptoms.

Gut Microbiome Changes Appear in Infants Before They Develop Eczema, Study Finds

Researchers report in mSystems that infants experienced an enrichment in Clostridium sensu stricto 1 and Finegoldia and a depletion of Bacteroides before developing eczema.

Acute Myeloid Leukemia Treatment Specificity Enhanced With Stem Cell Editing

A study in Nature suggests epitope editing in donor stem cells prior to bone marrow transplants can stave off toxicity when targeting acute myeloid leukemia with immunotherapy.