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In Brief This Week: Premaitha Health; Quidel; Great Basin; and More

NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Premaitha Health announced this week that its French distributor, AdGeniX, has signed an agreement to offer the company's Iona non-invasive prenatal screening test from a second laboratory in France. The new laboratory will be located in central France to act as a regional hub.


In a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission this week, Quidel said it had entered into the fifth amendment to its amended and restated credit agreement.  The new amendment makes an additional $50 million available for the company to make permitted stock repurchases. The amendment further waives any default that may have occurred as a result of the company redeeming and retiring approximately $4.5 million in excess of the existing basket for permitted stock repurchases.


Great Basin announced this week that it has effected a previously planned 1-for-35 reverse stock split. The common stock opened for trading Thursday on the Nasdaq on a post-split basis, with 3.265 million shares outstanding. The company has also made proportional adjustments to its outstanding preferred shares, senior secured convertible notes, stock options, warrants, and equity incentive plan. The number of authorized shares of the company's common stock remains unchanged.


Forge Therapeutics and Active Motif announced this week that they are collaborating to advance epigenetic research related to the family of iron-containing lysine demethylases known as Jumonji KDMs. The companies aim to validate emerging epigenetic targets for oncology indications and demonstrate the drugability of Jumonji KDMs using Forge's expertise in the field of metalloenzymes and Active Motif's expertise in epigenetics and related technologies.


Interleukin Genetics said this week that it has received approval from its institutional review board for a clinical study to assess the impact of the company's PerioPredict Genetic Risk Test on dental patient engagement for more preventive dental care. PerioPredict identifies individuals at increased risk for severe periodontitis because they have a genetic tendency to overproduce chronic inflammation. The practice-based clinical study will enroll 800 subjects from 20 to 30 general dentistry clinics and is expected to launch on May 1.

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.