Med-tech happenings, including deals and partnerships, grants, preclinical data and other news in brief: Avacta Group, Biocept, Caremindr, Cortechs, Cytiva, Docbot, Erba Mannheim, Fluidigm, Global Wholehealth Partners, Incontext.ai, Integrated Genetics, Life Image, PCORI, RapidAI, Senzime, Smiths Medical, Subtle Medical, Sugarmate, Tandem Diabetes Care, Windtree Therapeutics.
Adarza Biosystems Inc.’s Ziva platform can simultaneously detect hundreds of proteins, antibodies, or substrates from a single drop of blood, plasma or serum, providing insight into an individual’s immune response. That could be critical for both surveillance and diagnostic purposes as the nation prepares for a likely second wave of the novel coronavirus in the fall when multiple respiratory pathogens will be circulating.
The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee met again June 23 to discuss the federal government response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and one clear signal that emerged from the hearing is that Congress will have to provide annual funding to build a sustainable infrastructure for vaccine development and manufacture if the nation is to deal appropriately with the next pandemic.
DUBLIN – Translate Bio Inc. is the first beneficiary to gain from Sanofi SA’s massive $11.7 billion addition to its balance sheet, following its recent disposal of its holdings in long-time partner Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. Lexington, Mass.-based Translate Bio is getting $300 million up front, another $125 million in equity investment and up to $1.9 billion in milestones under a major expansion of an existing agreement with Paris-based Sanofi to develop mRNA-based vaccines for infectious disease.
PARIS – Stilla Technologies SAS, of Villejuif, France, is supplying a new, cost-effective approach for COVID-19 testing by combining its digital polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technology with the group testing method. “This approach greatly increases testing capacity and meets the highest quality standards,” Rémi Dangla, co-founder and CEO of Stilla Technologies, told BioWorld.
Beverly, Mass.-based Lexagene Holdings Inc. has developed a genetic analyzer with multiplex testing capability that would enable it to determine whether a patient has COVID-19, influenza or another respiratory infection with one sample. The Lx Analyzer uses a proprietary quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) method to automatically test for up to 27 pathogens simultaneously, all in about one hour.
