Head-hunter Katie Davis is consistently keeping up to date with the latest news within the biotech industry, whether that be funding news, acquisitions, spin outs and expansions, legal updates, layoffs and restructuring, collaborations or general product updates. In this blog, we explore the latest updates throughout the month of August. You can subscribe to Katies biotech funding updates over on LinkedIn to keep up to date with the ever-growing biotech market.
Acquisitions, spin outs and expansions:
Roche Diagnostics will invest RMB 3 billion ($419.9 million) into expanding its diagnostics production facility in Suzhou, China.
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Centre has been awarded ~$3 million from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) to establish a new spatial genomics core facility.
Danaher Acquires Swiss Informatics Firm Genedata. The acquisition will add to Danaher’s tools for drug discovery, development, and manufacturing and follows several previous collaborations between the two companies.
Myriad Genetics has completed the sale of its EndoPredict breast cancer prognostic test business to Eurobio Scientific. Part of the sale granted Eurobio the rights to sell in vitro diagnostic kits for its Prolaris prostate cancer prognostic test outside the US. Myriad retained the rights to produce and sell EndoPredict in the US.
UCLA has received a $120 million commitment from Dr. Gary Michelson and Alya Michelson, to kick-start the California Institute for Immunology and Immunotherapy. The gift, distributed via the Michelson Medical Research Foundation, designates $100 million to establish two research entities within the institute, one will focus on rapid vaccine development and the other on harnessing the microbiome to advance human health.
Labcorp finalizes acquisition of select assets of Invitae.
Calibre Scientific acquires Greyhound Chromatography, a UK provider of analytical standards and chromatography consumables, Industrial Glassware a U.S. manufacturer and provider of laboratory supplies and consumables and Acefesa, a Provider of laboratory consumables and equipment in Spain.
Quest Diagnostics to acquire University Hospitals’ outreach laboratory services business.
Avantor, Inc. announced the signing of a definitive agreement to divest its clinical services business, including kitting, biorepository, and related equipment and to Audax Private Equity for a transaction value of approximately $650 million.
AI-enabled biotech’s Recursion and Exscientia have entered into a merger that will create a company with $850 million in cash and 10 upcoming clinical readouts over the next 18 months.
Hitachi High-Tech acquires majority interest in Nabsys, a developer and manufacturer of instrumentation and consumables for the analysis of genomic structural variation.
Legal update:
Association for Molecular Pathology and Michael Laposata, a pathologist at the University of Texas Medical Branch-Galveston, have filed a lawsuit against the US Food and Drug Administration challenging the agency’s May 6 final rule on laboratory-developed tests (LDTs).
The state of New York announced that Enzo Biochem will pay $4.5 million for a 2023 data breach involving 2.4 million patient records across three states (New York state, Connecticut, and New Jersey).
Layoffs & restructuring:
Cepheid Lays off 626 Employees in Manufacturing Consolidation Move. The Danaher subsidiary is consolidating all US-based cartridge manufacturing activities to its high-tech facility in Lodi, California.
Grail to cut headcount by 30% in restructuring to save $27 million this year.
Genentech to lay off 93 in San Francisco.
Single-Cell Gene editing startup Tome Biosciences is letting go of 131 employees, nearly all of its headcount.
DermTech sells assets and becomes a private company. The company will retain its laboratory in San Diego and continue processing orders for its DermTech Melanoma Test.
To track pharma layoffs, take a look at the Biospace website.
Collaborations & partnerships:
10x Genomics, Inc. announced its involvement in TenK10K, a large-scale, multi-year study led by the Garvan Institute of Medical Research.
MaxCyte announces collaboration with ScaleReady to participate in the G-Rex Grant Program.
Flagship Pioneering & Quotient Therapeutics team up for Pfizer drug discovery partnership.
Advanced Genomics APAC & CancerFree Biotech partner to combine NGS and Drug Response Testing.
Qiagen & AstraZeneca expand CDx collaboration beyond cancer.
Hitachi High-Tech & Gencurix partner to bring cancer MDx to Japanese market.
Metabolon & SERA (Scottish Early Rheumatoid Arthritis) partner on research into metabolomic biomarkers for rheumatoid arthritis.
Imidex & Orbit Genomics partner to develop lung cancer detection technologies.
BerGenBio & Tempus partner for Bemcentinib trial in STK11-Mutant NSCLC.
Dovetail Genomics partners with Germany’s Goenomics on genome annotation services.
Foundation Medicine & Merus partner to develop CDx for cancer drug to treat patients with NRG1 Fusions.
Inocras & Broad Institute partner on Cancer Whole-Genome Sequencing research.
Personalis & Tempus AI are expanding their commercial relationship, with Tempus investing $36 million into Personalis and accelerating its commercialization efforts for Personalis’ minimal residual disease test.
EnPlusOne Biosciences & Wyss Institute partner on disease-agnostic RNA therapeutic development. The project, part of a $27 million federally funded initiative, includes $3.5 million in funding to further develop EnPlusOne’s enzymatic RNA synthesis platform.
DNAnexus & Galatea Bio collaborate to improve access to genetic tools in underserved populations.
Pangea Biomed, Hadassah University & Ultima Genomics team up to improve tumour treatment predictions.
Momentum Biotechnologies and Cube Biotech announce strategic partnership to support clients in their pursuit of novel therapeutic solutions.
Parse Biosciences inks Taiwan distribution agreement with Prisma Biotech.
Sysmex & Qiagen expand strategic partnership. They will collaborate in the area of genetic testing and use a Qiagen-developed assay to support clinical trials at Sysmex’s global laboratory network.
PacBio partners with Singapore’s Precision Medicine Program for population genomics research.
Indica Labs and Paige forge strategic partnership to expand integrated AI for anatomic pathology labs.
Baylor Genetics & Baylor College of Medicine launch joint diagnostics lab venture.
BostonGene & Takeda form immunotherapy clinical research partnership.
Scale Biosciences has launched a so-called “100 Million Cell Challenge” grant program in collaboration with Ultima Genomics and Nvidia.
Bioz & PCR Biosystems team up to revolutionize PCR research with cutting-edge AI insights.
Bioz also announced a new partnership with Hitachi High-Tech enabling real-time access to scientific citation data.
Product updates:
Partillion Bioscience announces early access program for Nanovial Multicell Assays to enable the study of cell-to-cell interactions.
Biognosys announced NULISA proteomics assay (developed by Alamar Biosciences) services are commercially available for biomarker discovery in plasma and other biofluids.
Pillar Biosciences has launched oncoReveal Nexus, a research-use-only next-generation sequencing-based targeted cancer panel kit.
Indica Labs announced expansion of AI capabilities for life science with the launch of HALO AI Apps, pre-trained tissue classifiers and cell phenotypes for tissue-based research applications. They also launched the Lung Macrodissect AI, a ground-breaking tool that revolutionizes slide microdissection and molecular pathology workflows.
Maine Molecular Quality Controls has introduced new reference material for Cepheid’s Xpert PML-RARA assay, the Xpert PML-RARA Control Panel C215 and the Xpert PML-RARA Linearity Panel C221.
Cygnus Technologies and TriLink BioTechnologies, both a part of Maravai LifeSciences, have launched AccuRes Host Cell DNA Quantification kits.
Nikon announces new image analysis functions to empower drug discovery research for cancer, neurological disease and regenerative medicine.
Zymo Research has launched its Zymo-Seq SPLAT DNA Library Kit and the Quick-DNA/RNA Water Kit to provide total DNA/RNA recovery from water samples.
Ansa Biotechnologies has launched the Ansa Clonal DNA and Ansa DNA Fragments services for enzymatic DNA synthesis.
Ambry Genetics has launched the ExomeReveal multiomic exome sequencing test for rare disease detection.
Genetic Technologies has globally launched its GeneType Risk Assessment test for the EasyDNA platform.
Maine Molecular Quality Controls has launched new panels for quality control and performance monitoring of two commercial sample-to-answer molecular tests.
Illumina and Beckman Coulter Life Sciences have launched an automated version of the Illumina TruSight Oncology 500 DNA/RNA assay on the Biomek NGenius System.
Twist Bioscience is now offering gene fragments with increased length, from 1.8 kb to 5 kb.
Stemcell has released the EasySep Total Nucleic Acid Extraction Kit.
Inoviv launches MasterKey™, a customizable platform for multiplexed targeted protein assays, leveraging a pre-characterized database of thousands of proteins.
Illuminahas launched an expanded menu of oncology assays for the NovaSeq X instrument.
IDT has launched Rapid Genes, high-quality, next-generation sequencing-verified, clonal genes.
Twist Bioscience and BitBiome have launched a joint Transaminase Enzyme Screening Kit.
Thermo Fisher Scientific has launched the One Lambda Pre-Transplant Risk Assessment (PTRA) assay.
Seegene develops mpox PCR Test Assays following the WHO Global Health Emergency Declaration.
Eurofins Scientific has launched the research-use-only Mplex Mpox & Orthopox assay.
Guardant Health’s Liquid Biopsy CDx gets Japanese regulatory approval for Janssen lung cancer drug.
Adaptive Biotechnologies gets IVDR Class C certification for ClonoSeq assay.
llumina announced that the FDA has approved its sequencing-based TruSight Oncology (TSO) Comprehensive assay as a companion diagnostic for kinase inhibitor drugs from Bayer and Lilly.
Agendia gets CE-IVDR Certification for MammaPrint & BluePrint FFPE Breast Cancer Tests.
Sophia Genetics has received CE marking for its Data-Driven Medicine (DDM) platform under the European Union’s In Vitro Diagnostic Regulation.
FDA approves Thermo Fisher Scientific HLA Typing Kit as CDx for Adaptimmune T-Cell Receptor Therapy.
Labcorp receives FDA De Novo Authorization for Blood-Based Tumor Mutation Profiling Assay.
Bio-Rad launches Annexin V StarBright Conjugates for Apoptosis Detection via Flow Cytometry.
Amerigo Scientific releases customized bioreactors optimal for pilot and production scale.
Telo Genomics receives CLIA certification.
(All findings throughout this blog article were founded from Crunchbase (2024). Crunchbase is the leading destination for company insights from early-stage startups to the Fortune 1000. )
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