Agilent Lowers Outlook Given currency and the discontinued NMR business (see IBO 3/31/15), which reduced sales growth by 7% and 1%, respectively, Agilent Technologies fiscal third quarter sales ending July 31 grew 0.5% to $1,014 million (see page 12). Despite the modest growth, sales were above analysts’ expectations. Core sales, which exclude the NMR business, […]

Company Announcements In June, Genedata announced an alliance with IntelliCyt to integrate their respective Genedata Screener software and iQue Screener systems. In August, IntelliCyt named SpectraGenetics as the latest TAP awardee and partner. The TAP program collaborates with scientists and commercial partners to advance cell- and bead-based assays. Biolin Scientific named Thais T. Johansen as […]

Company Announcements SIRION Biotech announced in June that it will open an office in the Boston, Massachusetts, area. Advanced Cell Diagnostics raised $22 million in Series C equity financing, led by Summit Partners. Hepregen announced a European comarketing agreement with SOLVO Biotechnology for its HepatoPac and HepatoMune kits. The Next Gen Consortium designated the nonprofit […]

Company Announcements Thermo Fisher Scientific announced in July a partnership with the CDC’s Special Bacteriology Reference Laboratory and the development of the MicrobeBridge software platform to seamlessly connect Sanger sequencing to the MicrobeNet database. Thermo also plans to develop compatible software for its NGS and MS platforms. In June, Contextual Genomics and Canada’s Personalized Medicine […]

The European Commission has released information about Horizon 2020’s first 100 calls for proposals, which closed on December 1, 2014. For these calls, 31,115 full, eligible proposals were submitted. Applications from those proposals numbered 123,334 and together requested €80.3 billion ($88.5 billion). Of the proposals, 4,315 were retained for funding, and 3,236 grant agreements were […]

This month, India’s Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs approved an INR 1,750 crore ($272 million) proposal to strengthen and upgrade the central and state drug regulatory systems over a three-year period. The central structures, which include the Central Drug Standards Organization (CDSCO), will receive INR 900 crore, and the state governments, after signing a memorandum […]

With this month’s approval by the European Council of Ministers and Greece’s parliament of the most recent plan to bail out the country, prospects for Greece’s research budgets are improving. Since the Greek financial crisis began, researchers were dependent on international funds, such as Horizon 2020, to support their projects. Now, some money from the […]

Spending on specialty drugs grew 26.5% last year to account for 33% of all US spending on prescription drugs, compared to 23% in 2010. Specialty drugs are often defined as “prescription products requiring extra handling or administration that are used to treat complex diseases including hepatitis C, multiple sclerosis and cancer.” The rise in expenditures […]

The nonprofit Center for Medical Technology Policy’s Green Park Collective, a multistakeholder forum, has released a draft of its initial guidelines for insurance coverage of NGS-based oncology testing. The guidelines recommend coverage of NGS panels of 5–50 genes that include a subset of genes that “are considered to be standard of care and medically necessary […]