Color Health Inc. followed its rainbow to another pot of gold, collecting $100 million in a series E financing round led by Kindred Ventures and funds advised by T. Rowe Price Associates Inc. Returning funding round participants also included General Catalyst, the company’s long-time lead investor, Viking Global Investors and Emerson Collective. With the latest cash infusion, the company’s total funds raised to date reached $378 million and its valuation of $4.6 billion propelled it into the top dozen health care unicorns. Founded in 2017 as Color Genomics, the Burlingame, Calif.-based company has raised more than two-thirds of its total funding this year with today’s series E following the close of a $167 million series D round in January.

As a counterpoint to the raft of wellness-promoting smartwatches, Purdue University and Physiq Inc. have developed a smartwatch algorithm that flags illness. A year after launching their co-development program, the two organizations reported they have created an algorithm designed for smartwatches that enables detection of early signs of infection. The algorithm is already in use in a number of Physiq’s customers’ applications, Physiq Chief Scientific Officer Stephan Wegerich told BioWorld.

Selux Diagnostics Inc. has received breakthrough device designation from the FDA for its Next Generation Phenotyping (NGP) platform for positive blood culture and sterile body fluid samples. The NGP technology is a diagnostic platform designed to help with the delivery of personalized antimicrobial therapies within 24 hours. The Boston-based company is hoping the technology can tackle the global antibiotic resistance crisis. According to the World Health Organization, antimicrobial resistance is one of the top 10 global public health threats facing humanity.

Trimers of nanobodies, a simpler form of antibody made by some animal species, were effective at preventing and treating COVID-19 in preclinical studies, researchers reported in the Sept. 22, 2021, issue of Nature Communications. The findings, along with others, could form the basis of an inhaled biologics treatment for COVID-19 and, ultimately, other respiratory diseases.

The U.S. FDA has cleared Memed Diagnostics Ltd.'s blood test for distinguishing between bacterial and viral infections. The diagnostic test has been tipped as an essential step in the fight against antimicrobial resistance. While most infectious disease tests look for the pathogen, Memed BV is an advanced host immune response test that measures the levels of immune system proteins and applies proprietary algorithms to generate an immune signature.

A multicenter study has found that a multiplex diagnostic panel developed by Opgen Inc. can reduce the use of inappropriate antibiotic therapy by 45.1%. Opgen’s Unyvero Hospitalized Pneumonia (HPN) panel uses PCR technology that can detect 21 pathogens and 17 antibiotic resistance markers in less than five hours. During the European Respiratory Society conference, Rockville, Md.-based Opgen presented data showing that combined with antibiotic stewardship, its HPN panel decreased time on inappropriate antibiotic therapy in hospitalized patients with pneumonia at risk for Gram-negative rods.

The FDA’s pre-IND response to Virpax Pharmaceuticals Inc.’s MMS-019, a molecular masking spray being developed as an over-the-counter product to limit transmission of SARS and influenza, has the company breathing easier and ready to chase an NDA. Virpax is in a crowded field of 43 COVID-19 intranasal therapeutics and vaccine programs.

It's a good news, bad news scenario for exhausted T cells in chronic infections. Multiple groups of investigators reported in the July 26, 2021, online issue of Nature Immunology that even after a chronic hepatitis C virus infection was cured, T cells that had become dysfunctional during the infection retained epigenetic "scars" that prevented them from becoming fully functional memory T cells.

PARIS – At some point, scientists reported, it may be possible to quarantine viruses rather than humans. For the last two years, European research consortium Virofight has been working on a form of nanotechnology intended to neutralize viruses such as SARS-CoV-2, HIV, influenza and hepatitis viruses.

Nanodx Inc. entered into a license agreement with IBM Research to use IBM’s nanoscale sensor technology and develop diagnostic platforms for rapid and cost-effective detection of various diseases, including COVID-19 and traumatic brain injury, among others. This marks IBM’s first collaboration to allow a medical device company to use its nanoscale technology.