NEW YORK (360Dx) – Angle this week announced its preliminary financial results for the fiscal year ended April 30. The liquid biopsy company reported revenues increased to £700,000 ($917,847) from £500,000 in 2017. The firm's loss for the year widened to £7.5 million from £6.4 million, reflecting planned investment to develop and validate clinical application and commercial use of the Parsortix system. Its installed base of Parsortix instruments grew to 200 from 145 in 2017. More than 49,000 blood separations have now taken place using the Parsortix system, up from about 30,000 at year-end 2017, the firm added. Angle had a cash balance of £7.6 million at the end of its fiscal year.
The company also noted that it acquired the assets of Axela for £3.6 million during its fiscal year, including that firm's Ziplex platform, which allows multiplex gene expression analysis of cancer cells. This complements the Parsortix system, Angle said, and the instruments will eventually be offered to customers as a full sample-to-answer solution.
Weill Cornell Medicine announced this week that it has been accepted into a designated laboratory network, the National Cancer Institute's Molecular Analysis for Therapy Choice (MATCH). As such, the institution can run its New York state-approved Exome Cancer Test version 1.0 (EXaCT-1), Oncomine, and 50-gene panel tests on tumor samples to help enroll patients in the MATCH clinical trial. Weill Cornell's New York Presbyterian Hospital launched EXaCT-1 whole-exome sequencing for clinical cancer care late last year and has integrated results from the test into its electronic health records.
Agena Bioscience said this week that it has been selected to participate in the Cancer-ID Consortium, whose goal is to establish standard protocols for and the clinical validation of the use of blood-based biomarkers for cancer. Agena's MassArray system will be used to support mutation detection from liquid biopsy samples as part of Cancer-ID's work in lung cancer and breast cancer. The European consortium brings together experts in CTCs, ctDNA, and cfmiRNA to monitor the efficacy of treatment and potentially improve treatment options for cancer. Â
Healthcare marketing and supplies firm SmartPractice announced this week that it has donated $50,000 to the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) for quicker and more accurate monitoring of breast cancer. SmartPractice has now contributed $175,000 towards TGen's development of a liquid biopsy test since 2015. Specifically, this most recent donation will help TGen analyze blood samples from a clinical trial at the Mayo Clinic's Arizona campus to help evaluate if more breast cancer patients may benefit from the institute's test. TGen has developed a technology called Targeted Digital Sequencing, or TARDIS, to more precisely capture and measure ctDNA and use that information to help treat patients, SmartPractice noted.
In an updated preliminary prospectus filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this month, Bionano Genomics provided a price range for its planned initial public offering. The company said it plans to offer nearly 3.4 million shares of its common stock at $8 to $10 per share. The company had filed its original preliminary prospectus last month.
Biocept said this week that it has received a letter from the Nasdaq indicating that its common stock has regained compliance with minimum listing price requirements. The firm was told in January that it had failed to comply with a $1 per share minimum bid price requirement. As of July 24, the Nasdaq said that the stock had regained the aforementioned minimum closing bid price for at least 10 consecutive business days.
Becton Dickinson's board this week declared a quarterly dividend of $.75 per share, payable on Sept. 28 to shareholders of record on Sept. 7. The indicated annual dividend rate is $3 per share, the company said. BD's board also declared a quarterly dividend of $15.31 per share on 6.125 percent mandatory convertible preferred stock, Series A, payable on Nov. 1 to holders of record on Oct. 15.
PerkinElmer said this week that its board has declared a regular quarterly dividend of $.07 per share of common stock, payable on Nov. 9 to all shareholders of record on Oct. 19.
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