Up to 71% of people carry at least one pathogenic variant that could contribute to development of a heritable disorder in offspring, but until now, prospective parents often had to undergo multiple tests to understand their risks. Pacific Biosciences of California Inc. (Pacbio)’s expanded Puretarget portfolio provides a quicker and more streamlined solution as it covers all challenging tier 3 genes identified in the American College of Medical Genetics technical standard.

Perkinelmer Inc. said the Vega is a first-of-its-kind preclinical ultrasound system that will accelerate preclinical research and drug development studies of cancer, cardiovascular, liver, kidney and other diseases. The imaging platform combines hands-free automation with high-throughput capability, which the company said is a major advance over manual ultrasound scanning across the bodies of individual lab mice.