Lumos Diagnostics Inc.’s stock shot up 162% Wednesday morning on news that it signed a pivotal commercial deal with Phase Scientific International Ltd to expand its reach into the U.S. market for its Febridx rapid, point-of-care test for bacterial infections.
Three months earlier than an expected update on a deal, Becton, Dickinson and Co. reported its biosciences and diagnostic solutions business will combine with Waters Corp. in a transaction valued at $17.5 billion. The resulting enterprise will operate under the Waters name and use its trading symbol (NYSE:WAT). Waters CEO Udit Batra will head the combined company.
With the June 9 U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee party-line vote of 12-11, Susan Monarez’s nomination is headed to the Senate floor where she could become the first CDC director to go through the confirmation process. That’s thanks to a provision in the bipartisan PREVENT Pandemics Act that was signed into law in 2022.
The U.S. Supreme Court preserved the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force coverage mandate that requires payers to cover certain preventive services at no cost to patients in a 6-3 ruling. That’s very good news for many diagnostics companies including Exact Sciences Corp. and Guardant Health Inc. as well as companies that manufacture HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PReP) medications such as Gilead Sciences Inc.
The 17 members abruptly terminated June 9 from the U.S. CDC’s Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices are not going gently into the night. Instead, they’re raging against what could be the dying of the light.
Despite the June 9 gutting of the U.S. CDC’s Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices, the Department of Health and Human Services said the committee’s June 25-27 meeting will continue as scheduled. But a new panel has yet to be named, and typically ACIP members have a lot of behind-the-scenes work to do before a meeting.
Absent extraordinary circumstances, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board “should never cancel claims it has not determined to be unpatentable as a sanction” for misconduct during a board proceeding, according to the acting director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).
Microneedle technology could help simplify vaccine delivery to better support global immunization efforts, and Australia is leading the way in this innovative technology.
Phase Scientific International Ltd. raised $34 million in a series A round to accelerate research and development of its early disease detection technology for multiple cancers, women's health issues, and infectious diseases.
Zip Diagnostics Pty Ltd., Menzies School of Health Research and Axxin Pty Ltd., a Melbourne, Australia-based
diagnostic instrumentation manufacturer, partnered to develop a rapid diagnostic test for scabies, a skin parasite that affects more than 200 million people each year.