CSI Laboratories announced the lease of a new 65,000 square foot facility in Alpharetta, GA, located north of Atlanta. CSI Laboratories is committing $15 million to its strategic expansion project, and this newly leased space will house its next generation laboratory, with clinical operations beginning in mid-2011. Fueled by strong demand for its personalized testing services, CSI Laboratories will utilize this new facility to achieve greater than a three-fold increase in laboratory capacity, medical offices, and administrative support.

Leading up to this expansion, CSI Laboratories has grown its medical team and executive leadership by recruiting top talent from around the country. Laboratory directors, Lawrence Hertzberg, M.D., Steve Kargas, MD, PhD, and Theresa Brown, PhD, each left Genzyme Genetics to join CSI during the past three years. Keith Sharkey, VP of Sales and Marketing, came to the organization after serving in sales management roles with US LABS and GenPath/...

At the Engineering in Medicine and Biology Conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre (IMEC) and its project partners announced the launch of the European Seventh Framework Project, MIRACLE. The MIRACLE project aims at developing an operational lab-on-a-chip for the isolation and detection of circulating and disseminated tumor cells (CTCs and DTCs) in blood. The new lab-on-a- chip is an essential step toward faster and cost-efficient diagnosis of cancer.

In a preceding joint project by some of the partners (MASCOT FP6-027652), individual microfluidic modules for cell isolation, cell counting, DNA amplification, and detection have been developed. Based on this expertise and strengthened by additional partners, the development of a fully automated, lab-on-a-chip platform to isolate, count, and genotype CTCs is envisaged within the framework of the MIRACLE project. For genotyping, genetic material (i.e., mRNA) will be extracted from the...

Myriad Genetics Inc. announced that its Board of Directors has authorized the repurchase of an additional $100 million of the company's outstanding common stock, following the completion of its previously authorized stock repurchase program initiated in May 2010.

As a result of its initial stock repurchase program, Myriad returned $100 million to its shareholders through the repurchase of 5.7 million shares of common stock, at an average price of $17.54 per share. The shares that the company repurchased represents 5.8% of its total issued and outstanding shares.

Under the new authorization, the company plans to repurchase an additional $100 million of shares of its common stock from time-to-time in open market purchases or privately negotiated purchases as determined by the company's management. Myriad expects to complete the new share repurchase on or before June 30, 2011.

Based on Myriad's closing share price on August 30, 2010, the new $100 million stock...

 Yesterday FDA issued a medical device alert regarding the use of fingersticks and other POC blood-testing devices. The message was clear: Do not reuse these devices. Doing so promotes the transmission of blood-borne infection.
CDC and FDA have seen a progressive increase in reports of blood-borne infections in the past decade. Hepatitis B was the most-transmitted of these infections. The agencies point to the shared use of fingersticks and other similar devices as being a leading cause of this problem. The infections are occurring in a variety of healthcare settings, the agencies say; however, a "significant increase" in Hepatitis B outbreaks are related to the shared use of multiuse fingerstick devices and POC blood-testing devices in long-term-care and...