Danaher to Open 2 New Centers of Innovation in Diagnostics

Danaher has announced two new Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA) and College of American Pathologists (CAP)-certified labs.

The two labs aim to accelerate development of companion diagnostics (CDx) and Complementary Diagnostics (CoDx). These tests lets patients receive targeted therapies to better treat their disease. CDx tests determine if a patient products enough of a certain protein to respond well to a specific drug. CoDx highlight broadly which type of therapy might be most helpful for a patient.

The first CLIA-pending lab is scheduled to open in July in Newcastle, UK. It will be a hub for collaborative research with pharmaceutical and academic institutions. Danaher subsidiary Leica Biosystems is hosting the lab in a new building on its campus.

Danaher’s other center of innovation in the U.S. is scheduled to open later this year. It will includes capabilities like immunohistochemistry (IHC), polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and immunoassay. Instrumentation from its subsidiaries Cepheid, Beckman Coulter Diagnostics, and Leica Biosystems will be available in this lab, with additional capabilities from other subsidiaries to join in the future.

Danaher’s installed base of instruments in more than 30,000 hospitals in 120 countries offers the potential to further facilitate faster commercialization of personalized treatment for patients.

“Our investments in these centers of innovation uniquely position Danaher as a global connector across the innovation ecosystem, leveraging diagnostic technology to simplify and speed pharma translational research,” said Julie Sawyer Montgomery, executive VP at Danaher. “I am excited about this new way of potentially enabling our partners to more quickly bring precision treatments to market—ultimately benefiting more patients everywhere.”