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Luminex's xMAP Biothreat Toxin Panel now available for detecting dangerous biotoxins

Quickly detecting and identifying dangerous biotoxins is now a reality, thanks to the xMAP Biothreat Toxin Panel (BTP) by Luminex. The xMAP Biothreat Toxin Panel is the first multiplex assay to rapidly detect and identify the six most easily acquired and most dangerous biotoxins. All six of these biotoxins are on the US government's list of most dangerous substances.

From Luminex 21 Jan 2015

Penn researchers make breakthrough on novel anesthetics

Penn Medicine researchers, in a continuation of their groundbreaking work to better understand how anesthesia works in the body, have found the first new class of novel anesthetics since the 1970s. Their findings, published in February issue of Anesthesiology, detail the processes through which the group uncovered these compounds.

21 Jan 2015

Chromatrap announce solid state ChIP kits

Chromatrap®, a business unit of Porvair Sciences, has an announced solid state ChIP kits which rapidly improve chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) through a unique patented technology that streamlines the process, ensuring chromatin preparation to qPCR analysis can be performed in under five hours.

From Chromatrap® - Porvair Sciences Ltd 19 Jan 2015

Mobile diagnosis device to help reduce unnecessary antibiotics prescribing

New biosensor-based technology could help to reduce the over-prescribing of antibiotics by giving GPs and other frontline healthcare staff an accurate and fast method of identifying the nature of infectious diseases.

15 Jan 2015

EKF highlighting heat and humidity compatible POC hemoglobin analyzer at Arab Health 2015

EKF Diagnostics, the global diagnostics company, announces that it will be highlighting the robustness of its new DiaSpect Tm POC hemoglobin analyzer.

From EKF Diagnostics 15 Jan 2015

BellBrook Labs announces launch of new Transcreener UDP TR-FRET Assay

BellBrook Labs, a leader in high throughput screening assays for drug discovery, announced the launch of a TR-FRET (time resolved Forster resonance energy transfer) version of the company's Transcreener UDP Assay, a high throughput screening assay for glycosyltransferases and other UDP-producing enzymes.

15 Jan 2015

UH Case Medical Center, ABL partner to design and validate HIV drug resistance tests

University Hospitals Case Medical Center has signed an agreement with Advanced Biological Laboratories, an information technology and diagnostic company based in Luxembourg, to join efforts on the designing and validation of an HIV drug resistance and tropism assay based on next-generation sequencing (NGS).

14 Jan 2015

QIAGEN's circulating tumor DNA test CE-IVD marked to assess genomic mutation NSCLC patients

QIAGEN announced today the CE-IVD marking of its novel liquid biopsy-based companion diagnostic that analyzes circulating nucleic acids obtained from blood samples to assess an important genomic mutation in patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), the most common form of this cancer.

From QIAGEN Manchester Limited 12 Jan 2015

New opportunity for developing simple test to measure E2F4 activity in ER+ breast cancer patients

By looking at the expression levels of downstream genes of the regulators in breast cancer, investigators at Dartmouth Hitchcock's Norris Cotton Cancer Center, led by Chao Cheng, PhD, have identified a gene signature in E2F4 that is predictive of estrogen receptor positive (ER+) breast cancer.

8 Jan 2015

Fast-track diagnostics releases CE-labelled Real-time PCR kit to detect Zaire Ebolavirus

Fast-track diagnostics, a global leader in the design, development and manufacture of infectious disease detection kits, has released a CE labelled Real-time PCR kit for the detection of the Zaire Ebolavirus – the strain responsible for the current outbreak in West Africa.

8 Jan 2015

Real-time RT-PCR TaqMan assay helps differentiate active pulmonary TB from LTBI

One of the roadblocks to the eradication of tuberculosis (TB) is the difficulty in identifying patients with latent TB infections (LTBI). Neither the tuberculin skin test (TST) nor interferon-gamma release assays (IGRAs) are capable of distinguishing active from latent infection or predicting the chance of reactivation.

7 Jan 2015

FDA provides Emergency Use Authorization for Roche's LightMix Ebola Zaire rRT-PCR Test

Roche today announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has provided an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for the LightMix Ebola Zaire rRT-PCR Test for use on patients with signs and symptoms of Ebola Zaire virus infection in conjunction with epidemiological risk factors, such as individuals traveling from West Africa.

From Roche Sequencing and Life Science 30 Dec 2014

Vermillion closes previously announced private placement with investors

Vermillion, Inc., a bio-analytical solutions company focused on gynecologic disease, announced today that the Company closed its previously announced private placement with investors including Oracle Investment Management, Jack W. Schuler, Birchview Fund LLC and several Vermillion directors. Total proceeds were $10.5 million, before offering expenses.

25 Dec 2014

Study offers insights into mechanisms of bacterial resistance to antimicrobial peptides

Antimicrobial peptides are a distinctive class of potent, broad-spectrum antibiotics produced by the body's innate immune system--the first line of defense against disease-causing microbes.

18 Dec 2014

University Hospital Bonn to validate accuracy of VolitionRx’s Nucleosomics technology in lung cancer

VolitionRx Limited, a life sciences company focused on developing diagnostic tests for cancer and other conditions, today announced that the University Hospital Bonn in Germany will initiate a clinical confirmatory study to assess VolitionRx’s proprietary Nucleosomics platform technology for the diagnosis of lung cancer through a blood test in individuals.

18 Dec 2014

Researchers identify 53 existing drugs that may block Ebola virus from entering human cells

Researchers found 53 existing drugs that may keep the Ebola virus from entering human cells, a key step in the process of infection, according to a study led by researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and the National Institutes of Health, and published today in the Nature Press journal Emerging Microbes and Infections.

17 Dec 2014

Penn study has implications for developing new cell-based treatments for skin disease

As the main component of connective tissue in the body, fibroblasts are the most common type of cell. Taking advantage of that ready availability, scientists from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, the Wistar Institute, Boston University School of Medicine, and New Jersey Institute of Technology have discovered a way to repurpose fibroblasts into functional melanocytes, the body's pigment-producing cells.

16 Dec 2014

Sensitive toxicity test aims to detect dangerous side effects in pharmaceutical development

Because of undetected toxicity problems, about a third of prescription drugs approved in the U.S. are withdrawn from the market or require added warning labels limiting their use. An exceptionally sensitive toxicity test invented at the University of Utah could make it possible to uncover more of these dangerous side effects early in pharmaceutical development so that fewer patients are given unsafe drugs.

16 Dec 2014

Oncotype DX assay linked to decrease in chemotherapy use in younger patients

In what's believed to be one of the largest population-based studies of Oncotype DX ever conducted, researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center have found that the commercial diagnostic tool, Oncotype DX, was associated with a decrease in chemotherapy use in younger patients, but not in those over 66 years of age.

14 Dec 2014

New study investigates use of DNA barcoding to test authenticity of popular herbal supplements

Dr. Damon Little, Associate Curator of Bioinformatics in the Cullman Program for Molecular Systematics at The New York Botanical Garden, has just published a new study in the journal Genome investigating the use of DNA barcoding to test the authenticity of Ginkgo biloba (G. biloba), an herbal dietary supplement sold to consumers that is supposed to boost cognitive capacity.

12 Dec 2014