Siemens Healthineers has announced an agreement to distribute Scopio Labs technology for examination of blood cell samples from digitized slides.

Scopio’s full-field digital cell morphology platforms are intended for use in the central laboratory adjacent to hematology analyzers to examine patient blood cell samples digitally and remotely, instead of on a slide under a microscope. The process is quicker than traditional manual microscopy, according to Scopio representatives.

Scopio has granted Siemens Healthineers global rights to distribute the Scopio X100 and Scopio X100HT digital solutions. The technology involves integrated artificial intelligence decision support and gives laboratory professionals a highly efficient way to standardize white blood cell differentials, red blood cell morphology, and platelet estimations, the company said. Remote review capabilities mean laboratory professional expertise will no longer be limited by physical location.

This technology complements Siemens Healthineers’ existing hematology portfolio to provide more expansive end-to-end workflow solutions, according to Siemens Healthineers.

BIOMÉRIEUX AND JMI LABS PARTNER AGAINST ANTIMICROBIAL RESISTANCE

bioMérieux and JMI Laboratories have announced a 6-year partnership to evaluate the performance of rapid and innovative microbiology diagnostics as important tools in the battle against antimicrobial resistance (AMR).

JMI Laboratories, now a part of Element Materials Technology, specializes in advancement of antimicrobial therapies, state-of-the-art surveillance, and post-market observations and insights in the antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) field. JMI’s Sentry Antimicrobial Surveillance, which monitors worldwide pathogens and the changes in resistance patterns, collects about 40,000 clinical isolates of bacteria and fungi annually through 150 medical centers worldwide.

Antimicrobial stewardship programs must continually evaluate AST results against new and emerging strains of pathogens that may have developed new resistance mechanisms or additional levels of resistance to current treatments. The new partnership allows bioMérieux to continually assess AST results and validate against evolving global antimicrobial susceptibility data collected through the Sentry program.

PARTNERSHIP PILOTS PANCREATIC CANCER SCREENING TEST

Microba Life Sciences and Biomed have announced a collaboration involving pilot research that could potentially discover novel microbiome biomarkers for pancreatic cancer.

The pilot will use Microba’s proprietary metagenomic sequencing technology and bioinformatic tools.

Pancreatic cancer has one of the highest mortality rates of all major cancers, typically late detection. However, survival rates improve with diagnosis in early stages of the disease.

The project is expected to run through late 2023. It will deploy Microba’s Community Profiler (MCP), a metagenomic platform technology. MCP can produce comprehensive and accurate species profiles of human gastrointestinal samples.

Mainz Biomed is currently commercializing its flagship product ColoAlert, a detection test for colorectal cancer. In December 2022, the company started a U.S. study of a colorectal screening test that may integrate the company’s portfolio of novel gene expression biomarkers. These biomarkers are the focus of current and forthcoming research.

FREENOME ACQUIRES ONCIMMUNE

Freenome has announced acquisition of Oncimmune, an immunodiagnostics developer with a commercialized lung cancer blood test that has received a CE mark, an autoantibody platform, and a research development platform pipeline of more than seven cancer detection signatures.

Oncimmune’s EarlyCDT Lung technology detects elevated levels of autoantibodies in the earliest stages of lung cancer.

The acquisition gives Freenome access to Oncimmune’s pipeline of autoantibody targets for other cancer indications and augments Freenome’s multi-omics platform with additional non-tumor-derived signals to capture a more comprehensive view of the tumor microenvironment.

PARTNERSHIP TO STREAMLINE DRUG DISCOVERY

OmicsEdge and Almaden Genomics have launched a service that will analyze genomic data from clinical trials.

The service leverages Almaden’s g.nome platform to streamline the iteration process and can both accelerate the drug discovery process and eliminate trial-and-error with abilities such as identifying causal variants that make ideal drug targets. The companies said the service will enable labs to conduct quick analyses of patients or trial participants’ medical conditions and genomics. The information gives valuable insight regarding genomic criteria and how it elevates risk.

g.nome has changed bioinformatic pipeline development with its visual drag-and-drop workflow builder and curated library of tools, in contrast to the usual laborious work of building pipelines with solutions hand-coded by a limited number of highly skilled bioinformaticians. The platform integrates with Jupyter Notebook and eliminates the need for coding in most applications and allows the broader research team to actively participate in the pipeline iteration and executing processes, g.nome said.

PARTNERSHIP FOCUSES ON ADVANCE IMMUNOTHERAPY RESPONSE TEST

Culmination Bio and Cofactor Genomics have partnered to leverage samples and data from one of the largest U.S. biobanks to fuel the development of Cofactor Genomic’s OncoPrism test in 11 cancers.

The partnership aims to build cancer biomarkers targeted by the Predicting Immunotherapy Efficacy From Analysis of Pre-treatment Tumor Biopsies (PREDAPT) clinical trial.

Cofactor’s OncoPrism assay is a laboratory-developed test powered by a sophisticated, multidimensional immune biomarker built to predict which cancer patients are likely responders to monotherapy of immune checkpoint inhibitors, such as Keytruda (pembrolizumab).

The partnership’s first focus is studying cancers of the head, neck, and lung, and will soon expand into nine other indications for which the study is approved. These include triple-negative breast, cervical, colorectal, esophageal, gastric, kidney, liver, and urothelial cancers.

Early readouts for the head and neck cancer biomarker show that Cofactor’s approach is twice as accurate as the PD-L1 biomarker in finding the subset of patients who respond to immune checkpoint inhibitors.