support Sequenom’s Trisomy 21 test to determine if an unborn infant has Down syndrome. So what happened?
In the financial statement that Sequenom filed yesterday, the company says its independent directors concluded that “we failed to put in place adequate protocols and controls for the conduct of studies in the Trisomy 21 program at our company. Certain of our employees also failed to provide adequate supervision. In the absence of such protocols, controls and supervision, the test data and results in our Trisomy 21 program included inadequately substantiated claims, inconsistencies and errors.”
So what happened as a result?
Sequenom says only that due to “deficiencies in our disclosure controls and procedures” the inadequately substantiated claims, inconsistencies, and errors from its R&D tests “were reported to the public in our press releases and other public statements.” In other words, the only consequence that Sequenom is willing to disclose is that its misleading research data got publicly reported.
One adversary who is agitating for a fuller explanation is David Jaroslawicz, a New York lawyer who represents TrovaGene (formerly known as Xenomics) in a lawsuit filed against Sequenom almost four months ago. TrovaGene says a federal magistrate judge in New York ordered Sequenom to turn over documents sought by Jaroslawicz as part of the case.
TrovaGene is a genetic diagnostics company based in New York and San Diego that had developed rival technology to detect and
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Author: Bruce V. Bigelow
In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here.
Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.
Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.
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