NEW YORK – Meridian Bioscience announced this week that it has closed its $20 million acquisition of the North American BreathTek business from Otsuka America Pharmaceutical. Meridian will take over the customer relationships to supply BreathTek, a urea breath test for the detection of Helicobacter pylori. The company said in a previous statement that it expects the acquisition to add more than $20 million of annual revenue.
Veracyte announced that it has completed its acquisition of HalioDx, making the firm a wholly owned subsidiary in exchange for €260 million ($306.3 million), consisting of approximately €147 million in cash and €113 million in stock.
Bonnie Anderson, Veracyte’s executive chairwoman, led the acquisition and will drive the ongoing integration, including the transition of manufacturing operations to France — a move intended to maximize the combined global potential of each company’s cancer diagnostics technology platform and capabilities.
Euformatics said this week that it has received an unspecified award through the Amazon Web Services Diagnostic Development Initiative to design and deliver COVID-19 genomic variant surveillance software. The Finland-based company also announced that Synlab would be the first customer for the new software.
Quotient said this week that its fiscal 2022 first quarter revenues were up 2 percent year over year.
For the three months ended June 30, the Eysins, Switzerland-based company posted total revenues of $9.1 million compared to $8.9 million in Q1 2021. Product sales from original equipment manufacturing customers slipped to $5.9 million from $6.2 million, while product sales from direct customers and distributors rose to $3.1 million from $2.6 million. MosaiQ sales dropped to $40,000 from $111,000, and other revenues grew to $48,000 from none a year ago.
Quotient had a total loss of $24.4 million, or $.24 per share, in Q1 2022 compared to a net loss of $25.4 million, or $.32 per share, a year ago. Its R&D spending increased 9 percent to $12.5 million from $11.5 million, and its sales, marketing, general, and administrative costs climbed 13 percent to $13.3 million from $11.8 million.
The firm ended the quarter with $114.5 million in cash and cash equivalents and $52.1 million in short-term investments.
Digital pathology company Paige said this week that it is partnering with Perspectum to improve the current pathology workflow for large clinical trials for liver disease by integrating Paige’s technology. Perspectum’s digital pathology service and repository platform for noninvasive and histology datasets will be combined with Paige’s digital pathology software platform.
Scope Fluidics' BacterOmic business said this week it is partnering with Technicolor to develop a small-scale cartridge manufacturing line for the BacterOmic system, which quantitatively assesses bacterial susceptibility to a range of antibiotic resistance in a single test. The agreement also covers R&D activity for the BacterOmic platform. Technicolor Precision BioDevices, a member of the Technicolor group, will develop the manufacturing line. The deal is for one year and is a pilot project. Financial and other terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Axim Biotechnology said this week it and Advanced Tear Diagnostics have signed a binding term sheet to acquire ATD's testing technology for dry eye disease. The companies expect to enter a definitive agreement to close the deal no later than Oct. 1. The acquisition includes two tests. The first is a lateral flow point-of-care system assay with a reader that detects exact levels of lactoferrin, and the second test measures ocular immunoglobulin E. Axim is optimizing the assay and expects to launch the test in Q1 2022, it said.
Applied DNA Sciences said this week that the City University of New York, a network of 25 colleges in New York City, has awarded a COVID-19 testing contract to its wholly owned subsidiary Applied DNA Clinical Labs. The contract is for one year and has a maximum value of $35 million. Applied DNA Clinical Labs will use its Linea COVID-19 Assay Kit for testing. The firm will also use its SafeCircle high-throughput, pooled COVID-19 testing program to provide weekly asymptomatic COVID-19 screening of unvaccinated students, staff, and faculty across CUNY's campuses. A random sampling of vaccinated individuals will also be tested, Applied DNA said. CUNY expects between 20,000 and 65,000 individuals will be tested over the length of the contract.
Todos Medical said this week it has completed its $10 million acquisition of Provista Diagnostics by making a final payment of $1.25 million. The acquisition was announced in April. Todos said it has invested $2 million to upgrade the equipment in Provista's lab. Provista offers its Videssa breast cancer blood test and provides PCR-based COVID-19 testing.
Cytek Biosciences said this week that the underwriters of its previously announced initial public offering have exercised in full their option to purchase 2,184,695 additional shares of common stock at the price to the public of $17 per share. With the addition of the full exercise of the underwriters’ option to purchase additional shares, the total number of shares sold in this offering was 16,749,330, and the aggregate gross proceeds to Cytek were $237 million.
National Bio+Green Sciences announced this week a strategic partnership with the Corowell Group, the manufacturer of the Corowell Rapid and Objective COVID-19 Symptom Screening Test, to distribute its test in North America. The smell test is intended to screen large groups of people quickly to determine whether anyone has been exposed to COVID-19, and has a specificity of 95 percent. Used with the Corowell app, which provides a screening questionnaire, it can identify candidates for additional testing via rapid antigen or PCR tests.
The US Food and Drug Administration this week revoked an Emergency Use Authorization it issued to MatMaCorp in December for its COVID-19 2SF Test. The firm requested that the EUA be revoked because it planned to no longer distribute the test as of July 31.
Genomtec said this week it has received ISO 13485 certification for quality management system compliance. Certification body TÜV Rheinland conducted the audits, Genomtec said, adding the certification covers the design and development of IVD devices for detecting predetermined pathogens. Genomtec said it plans to register its mobile genetic diagnostic platform in mid-2022.
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.