NEW YORK – The Delaware Court of Chancery last week approved a settlement in a case between Myriad Genetics and certain shareholders. Under the terms of the settlement, the plaintiff dropped their case against Myriad and Myriad agreed to pay the plaintiff $950,000 of attorneys' fees and expenses. The settlement included no admission of liability, wrongdoing, or responsibility by any of the parties.
Immunovia reported last week that its third quarter net sales fell 52 percent to SEK 235,000 ($21,500) from SEK 488,000 a year ago and those sales included only royalties. For the quarter ended Sept. 30, the firm recorded a net loss of SEK 51.1 million, or SEK .73 per share, compared to a net loss of SEK 38.6 million, or SEK .91 per share, one year earlier. The firm ended the quarter with SEK 54.2 million.
Health management platform company Function Health said this week that it will make Grail’s Galleri test available to eligible members. The company offers more than 100 laboratory tests, along with healthcare advice, to its more than 100,000 members in the US for $499 per year. Grail’s multi-cancer early detection blood test screens for several types of cancer and is recommended for adults with an elevated risk of cancer, including those age 50 years or older.
Precision medicine firm OncoHost said this week that its Cary, North Carolina-based CLIA lab has received accreditation from the College of American Pathologists (CAP). The company runs its proteomic PROphet blood test out of the laboratory. PROphet measures the levels of roughly 7,000 proteins, analyzing expression patterns to predict whether a patient is likely to respond to a given cancer therapy. The company’s initial offering is intended to guide decision-making around first-line treatment with immunotherapy in individuals with non-small cell lung cancer.
Alpro Group, Malaysia’s largest prescription pharmacy chain, said this week that it has signed a memorandum of understanding with AGTC Genomics. Under the agreement, AGTC will provide pharmacogenomics and nutrigenomics testing services, which will be available at Alpro pharmacies across the country. The partners will also launch educational initiatives to raise awareness about genetic testing.
Bionano said this week that its stockholders have approved the issuance of up to an aggregate of 35,026,272 shares of common stock issuable upon the exercise of the Series A warrants and Series B warrants issued in connection with a private placement in July. The Series warrants have an exercise price of $.571 per share, and the aggregate gross proceeds from the offering were approximately $10 million.
Thermo Fisher Scientific said this week that it has completed the repurchase of $1 billion (1.9 million shares) of its common stock. As of Dec. 3, $3 billion remained available under the company’s share repurchase authorization.
Diagnostics developer DeepUll announced this week that it has received breakthrough device designation from the US Food and Drug Administration for a sepsis test that detects pathogens directly from blood. The Ullcore BSI test runs on the firm's Ullcore sample-to-answer benchtop analyzer and detects up to 95 percent of pathogens that can cause sepsis from 8 milliliters of whole blood, with 52 reportable results.
Roche last week said it has invested more than €600 million into a high-tech production center for diagnostic input materials in Germany. More than 450 essential input materials for diagnostic tests will be manufactured in the highly automated and digitized facility. Construction for the new building is expected to be completed by 2027, with production at the facility expected to begin in 2028. Approximately 200 employees will work at the new facility.
Foundation Medicine has awarded two grants of undisclosed amounts to organizations working to address disparities in biomarker testing for breast and prostate cancer, the company announced this week. The company originally issued an open call for grant proposals in April, requesting that they include collaboration between two separate organizations. The 2024 grant recipients are:
- Living Beyond Breast Cancer and Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Jefferson Health for a project titled "No One Missed: Grassroots Pilot for Under-Resourced Metastatic Breast Cancer Patients." This project aims to determine factors (behavior, attitudes, communication practices, and norms) that motivate newly diagnosed, under-resourced, metastatic breast cancer patients living in Philadelphia to more fully participate in biomarker testing and shared decision-making. The pilot program will conclude in mid-2025.
- Patient Advocate Foundation and Zero Prostate Cancer for a project titled "A Patient-Focused Partnership to Advance Health Equity in Biomarker Testing among Patients with Prostate Cancer." This project will establish a prostate cancer biomarker education patient advisory group to address the unmet needs of Black men who face unique challenges in prostate cancer care, including mistrust of the healthcare system, lack of information, and financial barriers. The program will conclude by the end of 2025.
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.