Test kit and lab firms spent tens of thousands of dollars in the first quarter of 2020 lobbying legislators to win provisions in coronavirus protection laws to ensure COVID-19 diagnostics would be a top US legislative priority.

The use of mass spectrometry in IVD applications looks to be gaining momentum. In this article, Alina Kim, Sunayana Karra and Akash Kundu of Boston Biomedical Consultants report on new developments and innovations showcased at the American Association for Clinical Chemistry Annual (AACC) & Clinical Lab Expo (CLE) annual meeting that took place this summer. Players at the convention exhibited a range of Class I medical devices, research use only liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS), matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI-TOF), inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS), sample preparation automation platforms, and software solutions.

Piramal is working on what it claims is a well-rounded strategy for an international edge in the field of neuroimaging research. While it is adding newer tracers for detection of the root causes of Alzheimer’s disease, its first approved product Neuraceq is ready to hit the U.S. and European markets later this year.

Claude Wischik has spent more than a decade working on a drug that would inhibit the aggregation of tau tangles in the brain, and says his work has put the Singapore-based company TauRx Pharmaceuticals Ltd. onto a path that could produce the world’s best-selling drug, surpassing Pfizer Inc.’s Lipitor (atorvastatin).