December 27, 2017 | It’s been a big year for the diagnostics industry. Developments have led to a fantastic year of product announcements and thoughtful discussions. As we head into 2018, we at Diagnostics World would like to take a moment and reflect on the groundbreaking achievements from this past year. In that spirit, here are the top 10 stories of 2017, ranked in order of popularity.
--The Editors
1. Two Pore Guys Seek Assay For Platform
Newly out of stealth mode, Two Pore Guys is seeking diagnostic partners for its silicon pore detection platform. Read more
2. Roche Terminates Agreement With PacBio; PacBio Eyes LDT Market
Roche is terminating its agreement with Pacific Bioscience. The biotech doesn’t intend to pursue efforts to develop a sequencing instrument for use in the clinical research and clinical market using PacBio’s Single Molecule, Real-Time (SMRT) technology. Roche retains no rights to the technology and PacBio is free to approach any market segments with their SMRT technology. Read more
3. Gut Check: The Role Of The Microbiome In Parkinson's Disease
After struggling to treat Parkinson’s for centuries, researchers are reimagining the illness and pursuing a mind-gut connection that could lead to new and improved treatments. Read more
4. The IVD Industry Today
Harry Glorikian’s new book, Commercializing Novel IVDs: A Comprehensive Manual for Success, provides an overview of the IVD landscape today, from IVD conception through commercialization. Read more
5. How AI Will Support – Not Substitute – Pathologists
Many are viewing the AI revolution as the end of the pathologist, but in actuality AI has the ability to help pathologists and make them even more effective at their jobs. Read more
6. Hannes Smarason On The Future Of The Platform For WuXi NextCODE
“We’re taking a slightly broader view of the world than we perhaps have done in the past,” Hannes Smarason, WuXi NextCode’s newly-minted CEO, told Diagnostics World. That’s almost a challenge for a company with outposts in Reykjavik, Iceland; Shanghai, China; and Cambridge, Massachusetts, and whose provenance traces back to DeCODE Genetics on the Icelandic side and WuXi AppTech on the Chinese side. Read more
7. A Bloody Battle: Inside The Race To Kill Cancer Using Blood-Based Biopsies
The Blood Profiling Atlas in Cancer is heading up the effort to harness the collective expertise of roughly three dozen academic, government, biotechnology, diagnostic, and pharmaceutical entities with an eye on accelerating the development and approval of liquid biopsy diagnostics. Read more
8. Consumption Junction: Changing Tuberculosis Through Diagnostics
An ancient disease has brought the world to a modern-day crossroads. Here's how improved diagnostics could head off the tuberculosis epidemic. Read more
9. Quest Diagnostics, MDxHealth, QIAGEN, And More: News From June 2017
News, products, and partnerships from around the diagnostics community from numerous companies, universities, and organizations, including Quest Diagnostics, MDxHealth, QIAGEN, and more. Read more
10. Understanding How The Tumor Microenvironment Works
Muller Fabbri, from the University of Southern California, is studying the link between cancer cells and the tumor microenvironment in order to fully understand how cancer operates, and eventually outwit the disease. Read more