NEW YORK — The Department of Defense said last week that it has awarded Laboratory Corporation of America a $90 million increase in a previous contract for clinical laboratory testing services through the end of 2025. The department said that the contract was awarded through the Army Health Contracting Facility, and the work locations and funding would be determined with each order. Details on the original contract were not immediately available.
Thermo Fisher Scientific said this week that it has entered into a definitive agreement with Solventum to acquire Solventum's purification and filtration (P&F) business for approximately $4.1 billion in cash. Solventum's P&F business provides purification and filtration technologies used in the production of biologics, as well as in medical technologies and industrial applications. The business has sites in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia-Pacific and employs approximately 2,500 individuals. In 2024, it generated approximately $1 billion in revenues. Thermo Fisher said the acquisition is highly complementary to its bioproduction business, broadening its ability to develop and manufacture biologics. The transaction is expected to be completed by the end of 2025 and is subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals. Once the transaction closes, the business will become part of Thermo Fisher's Life Sciences Solutions segment and is expected to be dilutive to adjusted earnings per share by $.06. The new business is expected to generate mid- to high-single-digit organic growth, Thermo Fisher said.
Aptitude Medical Systems announced this week that its Metrix COVID/Flu test has been granted Emergency Use Authorization from the US Food and Drug Administration. The 20-minute molecular assay detects and differentiates SARS-CoV-2, influenza A, and influenza B and is authorized for use in point-of-care and home settings.
Cancer diagnostics firm Foresight Diagnostics said this week that it and Allogene Therapeutics have expanded their collaboration to include the development of Foresight's minimal residual disease assay as a companion diagnostic to identify patients with large B-cell lymphoma who may benefit from treatment with cemacabtagene ansegedleucel (cema-cel) in Allogene's ALPHA3 clinical trial. The firms will collaborate to support the development of the MRD assay in the EU, UK, Canada, and Australia as cema-cel is being developed. The drug is being investigated in the ALPHA-3 trial as part of a first-line treatment for patients with LBCL. As part of the trial, patients who receive initial treatment and who go into remission but remain positive for MRD, as identified by Foresight's Clarity investigation-use-only assay, will be able to receive cema-cel as a one-time consolidation dose to prevent disease recurrence. Foresight and Allogene announced their initial partnership last year to develop an IVD test to select patients with MRD after first-line consolidation therapy for a Phase II clinical trial of cema-cel.
Molecular diagnostics company Lucence said this week that Agilus Diagnostics will distribute Lucence's LiquidHallmark circulating tumor DNA profiling test throughout India for applications such as liquid biopsy-based early cancer detection, recurrence monitoring, and therapy personalization. LiquidHallmark profiles both ctDNA and ctRNA for actionable mutations in 80 genes and 37 ctRNA fusions. Last year, the test gained Medicare coverage in the US for patients with all types of advanced, recurrent, relapsed, refractory or metastatic solid tumors.
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.