A Medical Device Daily

Clarient (Aliso Viejo, California), an anatomic pathology and molecular testing services resource for pathologists, oncologists and the pharmaceutical industry, reported that it has signed a one-year agreement with Joint Venture Hospital Laboratories (JVHL; Allen Park, Michigan) to provide a range of cancer testing to its 120 hospital-affiliated labs. The agreement is renewable after the first year.

"This partnership provides more testing options for the pathologists and hospitals in the JVHL network," said Paul Valenstein, MD, president of JVHL. "We are encouraged by this new relationship with Clarient and are pleased to provide our doctors with the benefit of Clarient's cancer assays."

In grant news, TriLink BioTechnologies (TriLink; San Diego), a provider of custom nucleic acid-based compounds, said it has been awarded a Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant of roughly $750,000 to continue its investigation of modified dNTPs to improve the fidelity of PCR reactions.

Phase I studies demonstrated that TriLink's unique dNTP modifications enhanced PCR performance by increasing amplicon formation while reducing off-target amplicon formation. In the second phase of the program, TriLink will look to further expand upon Phase I studies to develop novel solutions for endpoint PCR, real-time PCR, multiplex PCR, fast PCR and more advanced PCR applications.

TriLink also will optimize the synthetic route for scale-up of the modified dNTPs and develop PCR assay recommendations in preparation for commercialization of the technology in early 2009. This is the third Phase II grant TriLink has been awarded, it said.