In August it entered the hot area of molecular diagnostics, highly sensitive tests to detect infectious diseases and cancer.
But gene-based health care is here and now in another form: molecular diagnostics.
In August it moved into the hot area of molecular diagnostics, highly sensitive tests to detect infectious diseases and cancer.
Unlike many in the biotech realm, a handful of companies dealing in molecular diagnostics have done well, with good profits and stock prices.
Thus far, much of the molecular diagnostics field has concentrated on infectious diseases, detecting HIV, hepatitis C and sexually transmitted diseases like chlamydia.
This is a molecular diagnostics firm, based in Salt Lake City, Utah, with a monopoly of the testing and the ability to put constraints on further research into the sequence.
For an era of targeted therapies, Private Health runs a full battery of molecular diagnostics "to sequence the entire three billion base pairs of somebody's DNA in a couple of hours, " Mr. Michelson marvels.
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"In the past you needed to do a culture" to test a person's virus, says Jorge Leon, former head of DNA testing at Quest Diagnostics (nyse: DGX - news - people ) and now president of molecular diagnostics consulting firm Leomics Associates.
It aims to bring together advances in artificial intelligence, wireless sensing, imaging diagnostics, lab-on-a-chip, and molecular biology.
At issue is the way that Medicare reimburses everyone from the big laboratory companies such as the Laboratory Corp of America (LH:NYSE) and Quest Diagnostics Inc. (DGX:NYSE), to the molecular diagnostic labs inside academic hospitals, and especially smaller firms that make proprietary tests used by doctors to more effectively target treatments to patients with conditions like cancer.
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