A Diagnostics & Imaging Week

Roche Applied Sciences (Branford, Connecticut) said that a study published online in PLoS Pathogens reports that researchers at Columbia University (New York), the South African National Health Laboratory Services, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Atlanta), and 454 Life Sciences (also Branford, Connecticut) have discovered a new virus that is responsible for a highly fatal hemorrhagic fever outbreak in Zambia and South Africa late in 2008.

The previously unknown arenavirus, which is distantly related to the Lassa virus and Lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus, was characterized using the rapid and sensitive sequencing technology of 454 Life Sciences.

The high-throughput 454 Sequencing System, designed by Roche Applied Sciences, has been shown to be a powerful pathogen discovery tool in a series of recent studies. 454 Life Sciences makes the 454 Sequencing System for ultra-high-throughput DNA sequencing.

D3 in CEO search

D3 Technologies (Glasgow, Scotland), a provider of trace level detection technologies based on the exploitation of surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) and surface enhanced resonance Raman scattering (SERRS), reported that it has initiated a search for a new CEO.

The company's current CEO, Professor Ewen Smith, will continue to serve in his current position during the search process before he steps down later this year, thus ensuring an orderly transition during what it termed "an exciting period of development in the molecular diagnostics market."

The company is seeking a CEO with international experience of new product development and marketing of clinical molecular diagnostics products, to lead D3 Technologies as it moves toward the international launch of its first in vitro diagnostic products.

Smith said, "Since the successful spin-out of D3 Technologies from the University of Strathclyde in July 2007, it has been a wonderfully stimulating experience to guide a highly professional multi-disciplinary team of molecular biologists, chemists, physicists, material scientists and engineers, all working towards the development of improved DNA-based diagnostic tests to detect diseases, or the genetic predisposition to diseases."

He added, "I think that at this time a CEO with commercial skills to take the product to market would be beneficial for D3 and for that reason intend to stand down."