Danaher announced that it is launching two CLIA- and College of American Pathologists (CAP)-certified labs to accelerate the firm's development of companion (CDx) diagnostics and complementary diagnostics (CoDx).
CAP and CLIA certifications are still pending for the two labs, Danaher said.
While CDx tests are designed to determine whether a patient will respond well to a specific therapy, CoDx tests highlight broadly which type of therapy may be most helpful to a patient.
The first of the two labs is scheduled to open in July in Newcastle, U.K., in a new building on the campus of Danaher subsidiary Leica Biosystems. In a statement, Danaher said that the lab will serve as a hub for collaborative research with pharmaceutical firms and academic institutions.
The second lab, which will be at a location in the U.S. that hasn't been announced yet, is scheduled to open later this year. The U.S. lab will include technologies such as immunohistochemistry, polymerase chain reaction, and immunoassays, with instrumentation from several Danaher subsidiaries, including Cepheid, Beckman Coulter Diagnostics, and Leica Biosystems in use at this lab. Other capabilities and technologies from other subsidiaries are expected to be added in the future.
