Skip to main content
Premium Trial:

Request an Annual Quote

Thermo Fisher, Siemens Healthcare Team on PCR-Based Molecular Dx Workflow

NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Thermo Fisher Scientific and Siemens Healthcare have announced a new strategic relationship to integrate Thermo Fisher's real-time PCR into Siemens' Versant kPCR molecular diagnostics platform.

The partners have already combined the technologies into a workflow that Siemens will display next week at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Disease.

"We are excited to collaborate with Siemens in support of its Versant kPCR Molecular Solution as we work to expand our partnerships in the diagnostics space," Drew Burch, Thermo Fisher's head of licensing and commercial supply, said in a statement.

Thermo Fisher offers a real-time PCR ecosystem of reagents, instruments, and assays.

Siemens' Versant kPCR Molecular System has proved to be a platform upon which emerging infectious disease assays can be run. Last month, Siemens released a research-use-only Zika virus test, and in recent years other diagnostics firms have developed qPCR assays, such as a MERS test, that can run on Versant.

The Scan

International Team Proposes Checklist for Returning Genomic Research Results

Researchers in the European Journal of Human Genetics present a checklist to guide the return of genomic research results to study participants.

Study Presents New Insights Into How Cancer Cells Overcome Telomere Shortening

Researchers report in Nucleic Acids Research that ATRX-deficient cancer cells have increased activity of the alternative lengthening of telomeres pathway.

Researchers Link Telomere Length With Alzheimer's Disease

Within UK Biobank participants, longer leukocyte telomere length is associated with a reduced risk of dementia, according to a new study in PLOS One.

Nucleotide Base Detected on Near-Earth Asteroid

Among other intriguing compounds, researchers find the nucleotide uracil, a component of RNA sequences, in samples collected from the near-Earth asteroid Ryugu, as they report in Nature Communications.