News Archive

QIAGEN N.V. (NASDAQ: QGEN; Frankfurt Prime Standard: QIA) today announced it has received approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to market the therascreen EGFR test as a companion diagnostic to guide the use of Boehringer Ingelheim’s new targeted therapy, GILOTRIFTM (afatinib), for treatment of metastatic NSCLC in patients whose tumors have certain EGFR gene mutations. More than 200,000 new lung cancer cases are diagnosed every year in the United States, with NSCLC accounting for approximately 85% of cases, leading to an estimated 160,000 deaths.

The therascreen EGFR test enables doctors to identify EGFR mutation-positive patients eligible for treatment with GILOTRIFTM (afatinib). The FDA approval of the therascreen EGFR test marks a further milestone in the global expansion of QIAGEN’s Personalized Healthcare franchise – and adds a third FDA-approved or cleared diagnostic kit to run on QIAGEN’s efficient Rotor-Gene Q MDx. Approximately 120,000 metastatic NSCLC patients each year in the U.S. could benefit from testing for EGFR mutations, a total potential testing market of about $35 million, according to QIAGEN estimates.

Bethesda tops a list of The Most Educated Places in America

Personal finance site NerdWallet Inc. ranked cities based on high school drop out rates and the percentage of the population with associate degrees, bachelor’s degrees, master’s degrees and professional or doctoral degrees.

Lower overall costs of occupancy — coupled with academic resources and an educated work force — have made clusters outside the nation’s largest metro areas more attractive to multinational pharmaceutical companies focusing on right-sizing and R&D productivity. In the Midwest, Chicago remains an emerging cluster, while Minneapolis is holding steady as a top-10 cluster for the second year in a row. JLL’s second annual life sciences cluster report ranks top-10 cities for life sciences companies in 2013.

Innovation is a vague word and is too overused today, in the words of Bryan Sivak.

That was kind of a bold statement to make at a conference focused on, well, innovation.

In his keynote address at CONVERGE, the chief technology officer for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said the department’s philosophy is that innovation happens as a direct result of the freedom to experiment, a much more descriptive and meaningful phrase.

At the funding panel discussion Wednesday at CONVERGE, a serial entrepreneur asked about crowdfunding.

First we got the stock answer of “don’t see how it’s possible for healthcare companies.” Then the conversation turned to cap tables.

Elliott Menschik of Dreamit Ventures said that having 50-60 people on a cap table is becoming normal.

Microryza.com (not the catchiest of names) is a crowdfunding platform for research that raises money over the Internet from individuals who are willing to donate small amounts to fund a specific project. The average donation according to Microryza is $92.

In return for a 5 percent cut of funds raised and a 3 percent credit card processing fee, Microryza provides researchers access to a website where they can solicit money from the public to fund their research. Crowdfunding is typically an all-or-nothing deal, where donors only have to pay their pledged support if the project is fully funded within a defined period of time.

University of Maryland (UM) Ventures announced today a collaboration between Frank Robb, Ph.D., at the Institute of Marine and Environmental Technology, and Department of Microbiology & Immunology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, and Rockville, Maryland-based Fina Biosolutions LLC to devise new ways to manufacture a key component used in many vaccines. The international nonprofit organization, PATH, which spurs new innovation with the goal of delivering high-impact, low-cost global health solutions such as lifesaving vaccines, will fund the partnership’s development efforts as part of its pneumococcal vaccine project.

“A new and improved vaccine production method is the goal of this public-private partnership between my lab and Fina Biosolutions,” said Dr. Robb. “It is designed to yield broader availability of an important vaccine component, which is highly effective, but prohibitively expensive for some applications, particularly in the developing world.”

CMS has proposed a policy change that would expand payments for telehealth services under the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule for 2014, Modern Physician reports.

Details of the Proposal

The proposed change would affect locations identified as rural “health professional shortage areas.”

Indiana University scientists have transformed mouse embryonic stem cells into key structures of the inner ear. The discovery provides new insights into the sensory organ’s developmental process and sets the stage for laboratory models of disease, drug discovery and potential treatments for hearing loss and balance disorders.

A research team led by Eri Hashino, Ph.D., Ruth C. Holton Professor of Otolaryngology at Indiana University School of Medicine, reported that by using a three-dimensional cell culture method, they were able to coax stem cells to develop into inner-ear sensory epithelia — containing hair cells, supporting cells and neurons — that detect sound, head movements and gravity. The research was reportedly online Wednesday in the journal Nature.