LONDON – Breath biopsy specialist Owlstone Medical Ltd. closed a $58 million oversubscribed series D, bringing the total raised by the company since its formation in 2016 to over $150 million. The money will support further development of tests for lung cancer, liver disease and respiratory disease, and of a new class of diagnostics, which rather than measuring endogenous markers of disease, involve administering chemical probes and assessing how they are metabolized.

Illumina Inc. and Merck & Co. Inc. are partnering to commercialize tests identifying genetic mutations used in the assessment of homologous recombination deficiency (HRD). Patients whose tumors are HRD-positive may be eligible for targeted chemotherapy treatment by a class of precision medicines called PARP inhibitors. The companies will develop tests utilizing Illumina's Trusight Oncology 500 assay for genomic profiling, which is designed to identify 523 known and emerging tumor biomarkers.

The U.S. National Institutes of Health had its hands full with the Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics (RADx) program as the COVID-19 pandemic unwound, but the agency’s other work on diagnostics is bearing fruit. NIH said Aug. 31 that its collaboration with an academic research institute has led to development of a test that predicts which patients suffering from neurofibromatosis will develop cancers with metastatic potential.

PERTH, Australia – On the heels of a A$90 million (US$67.12 million) initial public offering on the Australian Securities Exchange, device company Trajan Group Holdings Ltd. has doubled its share price and is well poised for its next stage of global growth. Trajan makes precision consumable products, devices and solutions that used in analyzing biological samples.

Ventura Capital has led a $60 million series A investment round into consumer genetic testing company Dnanudge Ltd. It is the first major fundraising round for the London-based company, which will be used to accelerate deployment of its DNA testing service worldwide. Dnanudge is aiming to tap into the lucrative consumer DNA testing market with Dnaband, a wearable device that stores digital DNA and helps users make healthier choices by personalizing shopping behaviors. The company is also planning a service for personalized skincare shopping.

LONDON – One in seven children and young people who have COVID-19 go on to develop symptoms of Long COVID, according to the first cut of data from a large national study involving 6,804 participants ages 11 to 17 who had PCR tests between January and March this year.

LONDON – Ibex Medical Analytics Ltd. has claimed a further advance in applying artificial intelligence (AI) to the interpretation of digitized pathology slides, reporting that the first commercial system in the world using AI to detect gastric cancers has gone live. The Galen Gastric system has been deployed at the pathology lab of Maccabi Healthcare Services, one of Israel’s leading HMOs, where it is now operational alongside Ibex’s breast and prostate cancer AI systems.

PARIS – Researchers from the department of radiation oncology at the European Hospital Georges Pompidou (HEGP) and Stanford University School of Medicine have together developed a new artificial intelligence (AI) prediction tool for patients diagnosed with prostate cancer. These researchers have just published a validation of this interpretable AI model in Cancers. “It’s a question of distinguishing patients at risk of mortality from aggressive cancer that is spreading rapidly, from patients who might have far less aggressive cancer and who are not likely to die from it in under 10, 15 or even 20 years,” Jean-Emmanuel Bibault, radiotherapy oncologist at HEGP, told BioWorld.