NEW YORK (360Dx) – Walgreens, Laboratory Corporation of America, and Inland Empire Health Plan (IEHP) this week announced plans to open nine new LabCorp patient centers within Walgreens stores in the greater Riverside, California area. The first four of the locations have already opened, and the rest are expected to open by the end of the year. The companies said the new locations will support lab access for a significant increase in IEHP membership in the Riverside region. LabCorp is the primary laboratory provider for approximately 835,000 members of IEHP's Medicare and Medicaid plans in Riverside and San Bernardino Counties. When the expansion is complete, there will be 26 LabCorp at Walgreens sites operated as part of LabCorp's network of nearly 2,000 patient service centers across the US.
In a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission this week, GenMark Diagnostics said that on Nov. 29 it entered into a seventh amendment to its loan and security agreement with its lender, Solar Senior Capital, under which the diagnostics firm borrowed about $7.1 million in additional funding through a new term loan. GenMark said that the loan is subject to the same interest-only period, final maturity date, interest rate calculation, and other terms and conditions as the other term loans made available to GenMark under its agreement with the lender.
Guardant Health this week opened its Asia, Middle East, and Africa headquarters in Singapore, which it said will scale commercialization of the firm's Guardant360 liquid biopsy assay in the region. It is currently offering the test to clinical customers in the region to assist with treatment selection for patients with advanced cancers. According to Guardant, it has already established distributorships in Southeast Asia, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, India, New Zealand, the Middle East, and Israel.
CareDx announced this week that it has prepaid its outstanding debt in full. The debt — a $15 million term loan from Perceptive Advisors — was obtained on April 13, had an interest rate of 9 percent plus the greater of LIBOR or 1.5 percent, an interest-only period of three years, and a maturity date of April 2023. In addition to the $15 million debt prepayment, the company also paid Perceptive Advisors a prepayment premium and an exit fee. The firm had cash and cash equivalents approximately $62 million after the payments.
Oncimmune said this week that it has reached a deal with Multiplan to expand access to Oncimmune’s EarlyCDT-Lung test, a blood-based test for clinicians to assess malignancy in indeterminate pulmonary nodules. Multiplan has contracts with 900,000 healthcare providers, and about 57 million consumers have access to Multiplan's network products.
OncoDNA said this week that it has received ISO/IEC 27001:2013 certification for its information security management and storage. The certification, which involved an audit by an accredited body to demonstrate the ability to protect the privacy of customer data, includes the company's IT infrastructure where data is stored and processed.
PathologyWatch said it has chosen Gestalt Diagnostics' digital technology solution for its remote pathology business. PathologyWatch provides specimen interpretation services to local labs. Gestalt said that it will provide its workflow, universal image viewer, pathologist cockpit, and intelligent reporting "to round out the full digital pathology platform solution being deployed at PathologyWatch," and enable it to take histologic slides from anywhere and distribute the work across a network of pathologists.
Biomerica said it has signed a three-year deal with Medline Industries to distribute Biomerica's EZ Detect screening test for early warning signs of colorectal cancer. Other financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Medline, which has 1,600 direct sales representatives, manufactures and distributes medical supplies. EZ Detect is an at-home test to detect fecal occult blood.
In Brief This Week is a selection of news items that may be of interest to our readers but had not previously appeared on 360Dx.