Shares of molecular diagnostic company – Myriad Genetics, Inc. MYGN inched up 1% to close at $35.13 on Friday, subsequent to the launch of its latest immunoassay service by the company’s wholly owned subsidiary Myriad RBM. At an initial level, Myriad RBM intends to use this test for the study of inflammatory and autoimmune diseases.
Myriad RBM has recently entered into collaboration with Quanterix – a leading developer of ground-breaking tools for high definition diagnostics. Under this partnership, Myriad RBM will offer its newly launched immunoassay services utilizing Quanterix’s ultrasensitive single molecule array technology – Simoa.
This Simoa diagnostic platform (available to researchers since early 2014) is the first of its kind that allows 100 to 1,000 times accurate measurement of blood-based protein biomarkers, which was otherwise difficult or even impossible to detect in blood samples earlier using conventional assays.
We believe the addition of the Simoa diagnostic platform reflects Myriad’s long-lasting commitment to offer high quality immunoassay research services.
Management at Myriad believes that this launch will open up new roads for clinical research by providing scientists better insights into understanding the mechanism of the targeted disease while also providing safe and efficient treatment options, thereby leading to improved biomedical discoveries.
Myriad has lately manufactured and validated Simoa-based quantitative immunoassays in its CLIA-certified laboratory at Austin, TX and plans to add more Simoa-based immunoassays through 2015.
We expect the launch of the immunoassay services utilizing the ground-breaking Simoa platform and the expected extension in number of assays to help Myriad Genetics expand its foothold in the global autoimmune disease diagnostics market. Notably, this market is expected to reach a value worth $13.1 billion in 2019.
In Feb 2014, Myriad entered into this huge potential autoimmune diagnostic market through the acquisition of Crescendo Bioscience. Crescendo’s novel offering – Vectra DA – that Myriad has gained from the takeover has allowed the latter to capture a considerable amount of shares in this billion dollar market. The company currently plans to invest vigorously in Crescendo's product pipeline of autoimmune and inflammatory disease test candidates, which is expected to expand its foothold further in the autoimmune diagnostics market.
Currently, the stock retains a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). Better-ranked med-biomed/generic stocks include Affymetrix Inc. AFFX, ANI Pharmaceuticals, Inc. ANIP and Cambrex Corporation. CBM. All these stocks hold a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy).
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