NEW YORK (360Dx) – Loop Medical said this week that it has received a second grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to support pre-production and clinical trials required for the global registration of its medical blood collection device. The second grant is for $3.2 million and brings the total amount of grant money received from the foundation to $3.6 million, the firm said.
Loop Medical said it is developing a painless and easy-to-use collection device that enables the collection of blood samples that are large enough to be compatible with high-throughput blood analyzers. Further, the device improves safety, particularly in countries with low medical resources, the firm said.
Precision Therapeutics announced this week that it has completed its merger with Helomics, which has become Precision's wholly owned subsidiary. The merger provides Precision with full access to Helomics' suite of artificial intelligence, precision medicine, and integrated CRO capabilities.
As a result of the merger, Precision owns 100 percent of Helomics. The firm has issued 4 million shares of common stock and 3.5 million shares of Series D convertible preferred stock to holders of Helomics capital stock, which is in addition to the 1.1 million shares of common stock previously issued to Helomics. In a related exchange offer, the company also issued approximately 8.6 million additional shares of common stock to the previous holders of Helomics promissory notes, and approximately 14.2 million warrants at an exercise price of $1.00 per share and 600,000 warrants at an exercise price of $.01 per share to previous holders of Helomics warrants.
Epic Sciences and its research partners said this week that Beigene is using Epic's CTC HRD assay to select patients for an ongoing Phase II clinical trial for the investigational PARP inhibitor paramiparib. The trial is being conducted by Beigene in patients with metastatic, castration-resistant prostate cancer. Epic's test is a new circulating tumor cell homologous recombination deficiency liquid biopsy assay that measures chromosomal instability within circulating tumor cells in patients' blood by identifying distinct cell morphology feature sets, Epic said.
Oncimmune said this week that its distributor in Colombia, Valentech International, has obtained regulatory approval in that country for the sale of Oncimmune's EarlyCDT-Lung test for the early detection of lung cancer.
Genomics software firm BioDiscovery said this week that Victorian Clinical Genetics Services (VCGS) — the genetic services arm of Murdoch Children's Research Institute in Australia — has adopted BioDiscovery's NxClinical software for analysis, management, and interpretation of copy number variants in its clinical SNP microarray workflow. VCGS has also designated BioDiscovery as a center of excellence to provide training services to NxClinical customers in the region.
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