Sequenom Builds Lab to Screen Test Results

A new 7,000-square-foot genetic testing laboratory is under construction at Sequenom’s San Diego headquarters. The San Diego Union-Tribune says today the new lab will open later this year, as the company begins to process samples in its “start-over” clinical trial intended to demonstrate the accuracy of its non-invasive test for Down syndrome. Sequenom (NASDAQ: [[ticker:SQNM]]) had to toss test results it had collected before April 2009, when the company scrubbed the launch of its test for Trisomy 21, the scientific name for Down syndrome, due to “mishandled data.” The clinical trial is being led by researchers at Women and Infants Hospital in Providence, RI, which is affiliated with Brown University. Sequenom hopes to introduce the Down syndrome screening test by late 2011. The test is sensitive enough to identify fetal DNA circulating in the pregnant mom’s blood.

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.