An agreement between Beckman Coulter and Saladax Biomedical will introduce new antipsychotic drug tests to laboratories and clinicians. Under the agreement, Beckman Coulter will distribute the tests, which are designed to measure blood levels of antipsychotic drugs. These new assays, developed with an innovative nanoparticle technology, will provide healthcare professionals with data to monitor psychiatric drugs prescribed for treatment of psychosis. These include clozapine, risperidone/oaliperidone, olanzapine, quetiapine, and aripiprazole.
The rapid assays will run on Beckman Coulter’s scalable clinical chemistry analyzers and shorten turnaround time for patient test results to hours instead of days, according to the company. The company expects the tests to drive greater success in managing and monitoring treatments for inpatients and outpatients.
Beckman Coulter officials said the relationship with Saladax expands laboratory and clinician access to antipsychotic drug testing for treatment of psychotic disorders and tackles an unmet clinical need for 69 million people with serious mental conditions worldwide.
Saladax officials said the partnership with Beckman Coulter makes more tests available that provide timely quantitative insights to healthcare professionals seeking to make reliable assessments. Assays are being introduced across Europe and the United States, with plans to expand to Beckman Coulter customers globally.
Avalon and CDPHP Collaborate on Genetic Tests
Avalon Healthcare Solutions recently announced a collaboration to provide genetic testing management with Capital District Physicians’ Health Plan (CDPHP). Avalon is a licensed utilization review agent in New York State and a fully delegated vendor with National Committee for Quality Assurance utilization management accreditation. Avalon delivers comprehensive genetic testing management for outpatient laboratory services, independent physician offices, and hospital-based labs.
Avalon requires review of prescribed tests’ medical appropriateness, which the company says effectively prevents unnecessary, low-quality and high-cost tests while ensuring labs are inputting codes correctly.
According to CDPHP, the collaboration will result in about 80 genetic testing policies for prior authorization review, versus just the one it had before the collaboration. These evidence-based policies improve alignment to laboratory science standards and Avalon’s Independent Clinical Advisory Board.
Avalon officials said that CDPHP’s focus on improving the health and well-being of its members and communities is aligned with Avalon’s mission to help its clients enable value-driven care in a dynamic and increasingly challenging environment.
CDPHP officials said that the venture with Avalon supports its commitment to lowering the total cost of care while preserving high-quality service.
Insitro and Genomics England Partner on Machine Learning
Insitro and Genomics England have announced a collaboration to bring Insitro’s machine learning-powered embedding search capabilities to Genomics England’s multimodal phenotypic and genetic database.
Insitro is a machine learning-driven drug discovery and development company, and Genomics England is a British company run by the United Kingdom Department of Health and Social Care that leads the 100,000 Genomes Project. The latter project maintains a database of almost 150,000 whole genomes with corresponding phenotypic data from National Health Service patients with rare diseases and their families, as well as patients with cancer. The resource includes a growing body of multimodal and high-dimensional data, including genetic data and histopathology images from its cohort of cancer patients.
Insitro will deploy its machine-learning capabilities on Genomics England’s histopathology images and accompanying genetic data to learn a multimodal representation that captures the fine-grained semantic structure in this high-dimensional clinical data. Powered by this representation, Insitro’s embedding search engine will allow users to search for related images, biopsies, or cases based upon biologically and clinically relevant semantic similarity rather than visual similarity.
Under the agreement, Insitro will make its embedding search engine available to Genomics England’s network of research partners within the secure Genomics England Research Environment. Genomics England will also allow its research partners to use this multimodal data resource for cancer research.
Biognosys Partners With Kymera Therapeutics on Precision Proteomics Biomarkers
Biognosys Partners, which provides next-generation proteomics solutions for drug discovery and development, and Kymera Therapeutics, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company advancing targeted protein degradation (TPD), have agreed to work together across preclinical studies and clinical trials.
Proteome editing with TPD is a new frontier of medicine aimed at expanding the druggable proteome, according to the companies. Biognosys’s TrueSignature platform offers high-precision proteomic panels that provide actionable insights based on highly specific and sensitive, absolute quantification of pharmacodynamic and efficacy biomarkers.
These custom panels allow Kymera to monitor and quantify protein degradation. The ease of transferability of the assays—from early discovery, across preclinical evaluation, to clinical development—enables integration into all stages of Kymera’s drug development process. The panels are developed and performed at Biognosys’s laboratory, the largest good laboratory practice certified and good clinical practice compliant mass spectrometry laboratory worldwide for large-scale proteomics contract research.
The current partnership between Kymera and Biognosys builds upon the longstanding scientific relationship between the two companies across early research and development, preclinical, and clinical settings in oncology and inflammation.
Applied Biocode, Hardy Diagnostics Enter U.S. Distribution Agreement for Mdx System, Test Menu
Applied BioCode, an in vitro diagnostic manufacturer specializing in multiplex products, has announced an agreement with Hardy Diagnostics, a leader in microbiology products, for the distribution of Applied BioCode's MDx-3000 system, a comprehensive menu for the diagnosis of upper respiratory infections, gastrointestinal infections, and a suite of analyte-specific reagents (ASRs).
ASRs can be used by high-complexity laboratories to develop their own laboratory developed tests (LDTs). Under the terms of the exclusive agreement, Hardy Diagnostics will begin offering the MDx-3000 system to clinical laboratory customers in the U.S., according to Applied BioCode.
Applied BioCode officials said that the partnership expands their company’s reach to U.S. hospitals and reference laboratories. Hardy Diagnostics officials said that the MDx-3000 molecular platform will help laboratories handle increased pandemic workloads because it is an easy-to-use automated system that offers reduced hands-on time, accelerated turnaround times, and complete assay panels with minimal potential for sample contamination.