A Diagnostics & Imaging Week
SeraCare Life Sciences (Oceanside, California) reported that, following a previously disclosed request from the SEC for a voluntary production of certain documents, the company has received a subpoena from the SEC.
The subpoena calls for the production of the documents that were originally requested, as well as additional documents.
The company said it continues to cooperate fully with the SEC in this matter. Separately, the company reported that it has appointed Cathryn Low as its interim CFO.
Low is a turnaround and workout specialist at Prolman Associates, a firm specializing in business turnarounds and management of Chapter 11 reorganizations. She is expected to serve as interim CFO of SeraCare until a permanent replacement is identified.
In March, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, shortly after reporting problems in its internal controls and the firing of Chairman Barry Plost, President and CEO Michael Crowley Jr., Secretary Jerry Burdick and CFO Craig Hooson. With that report, it also said that its FY05 guidance was to be withdrawn because of its unreliability, and that its financial statements for the quarters ended Dec. 31, 2004; March 31, 2005; and June 30, 2005, would be restated.
SeraCare is a manufacturer of biological products and services to diagnostic, therapeutic, drug discovery, and research organizations.
The company's offerings include plasma-based therapeutic products, diagnostic products and reagents, cell culture products, specialty plasmas, in vitro stabilizers, and the SeraCare BioBank, a database of medical information and associated blood, plasma, DNA and RNA samples.
In other legalities:
• CytoCore (Chicago), formerly Molecular Diagnostics (MDI), and Diamics (Novato, California) said that they have "amicably resolved" a dispute between them concerning allegations of trade secret misappropriation, unfair competition, patent infringement, copyright infringement in litigation filed in Federal District Court in San Francisco.
Diamics was founded by Peter Gombrich, former CEO and chairman of MDI, while Gombrich was working at MDI, now CytoCore.
CytoCore, as MDI, last year filed suit vs. Diamics, seeking injunctive relief and damages in excess of $30 million. The suit alleged that Diamics' actions "were accompanied by oppressive and malicious actions to take MDI's proprietary trade secrets and convert them to its own use." CytoCore develops cancer screening systems, which can be utilized to assist in the early detection of cervical, endometrial, and other cancers. Its InPath System is being developed to provide medical practitioners with a highly accurate, low-cost, cervical cancer screening and treatment system that can be integrated into existing medical models or at the point-of-care.