Quest Makes Equity Investment in Correlogic
Quest Diagnostics has made an equity investment in Correlogic Systems, the companies said last week.
The companies declined to disclose the amount of funding.
Quest retains an option to commercialize specific Correlogic diagnostics for particular disease states, the companies said. The company has also licensed Correlogic's OvaCheck for commercialization, the companies said.
OvaCheck was the subject of a February letter sent to Correlogic by Steve Gutman, director of the US Food and Drug Administration's Office of In Vitro Diagnostic Device Evaluation and Safety, notifying the company that the diagnostic may be subject to the agency's premarket review requirements.
OvaCheck is now in validation testing, Correlogic said.
Correlogic is also developing a prostate cancer diagnostic with the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences and the Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine based on its protein pattern-recognition approach, the company said in May.
British Gov't Seeks Proposals for
UK-Japan Structural Genomics Collaboration
The British Embassy in Tokyo is seeking proposals to support the initial stages of new collaborations between researchers in the UK and Japan in the field of structural genomics, the UK government said last week.
Proposals should be submitted by July 15. Click here for additional information.
GSK Licenses NMR Processing Software from ACD/Labs
Advanced Chemistry Development (ACD/Labs) said last week that GlaxoSmithKline will deploy its NMR Prediction and Processing software modules across its worldwide discovery research centers.
Under the agreement, scientists at GSK research centers in Europe and the US will use ACD/Labs NMR Processors for processing and analysis, as well as the ACD/CNMR Predictor for calculating chemical shifts and coupling constants for 13C NMR spectra. ACD/2D NMR Manager will also be installed at various locations to provide specialists with 2D NMR verification capabilities, the company said.
ACD/Combi NMR will also be installed at GSK's Stevenage, UK, and Research Triangle Park, NC, sites.
Financial terms for the licensing agreement were not disclosed.
Invitrogen Says Supreme Court's Merck v. Integra
Ruling Excludes Research Tools
A ruling by the US Supreme Court that will allow drug makers to use compounds patented by other firms in their research should not have a negative impact on companies developing molecular biology tools, according to a statement Invitrogen released this week.
On Monday, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that drug developers are exempt from patent infringement when using patented inventions "solely for uses reasonably related to the development and submission of information under a Federal law which regulates the manufacture, use, or sale of drugs."
Invitrogen noted in its statement, however, that the court did not include patented "research tools" in its interpretation.
The Court ruled in favor of Germany's Merck, which had been using compounds patented by Integra LifeSciences in its cancer research. Integra sued Merck, which is not related to the US firm of the same name, for patent infringement in 1996.
But although Invitrogen submitted a brief to the court in support of Integra LifeSciences in March, the company today claimed the ruling as a victory because the Supreme Court did "not extend the statutory research use exemption to patented research tools."
In a footnote to the opinion, Invitrogen noted, the Court said that it would not express a view about "whether, or to what extent" current law "exempts from infringement the use of 'research tools' in the development of information for the regulatory process."
Alan Hammond, chief intellectual property counsel for Invitrogen, said, "In essence, while the Court found that companies may use patented inventions in research activities related to the drug compounds or targets themselves, it excluded patented research tools from its ruling. We believe, therefore, that the ruling will not have a material effect on Invitrogen's business."
BioArray Solutions Gets FDA Clearance
for Bead Array Immunoassay
BioArray Solutions has received clearance from the US Food and Drug Administration for a bead array-based multiplexed immunoassay, the Warren, NJ-based company said this week.
The 510(k) clearance covers the company's IgG BeadChip test system, an immunoassay for the simultaneous detection of six antibodies to different extractable nuclear antigens. The test will be used with BioArray's Array Imaging System, AIS 400, which employs a chip format for detection.
BioArray Solutions is currently developing other assays for protein and DNA analysis to run on its platform.