Aura revolutionizes biologic stability analysis, enabling simple protein and non-protein aggregate identification in formulation development and analytical testing

DATE OF RELEASE: June 25, 2020

BURLINGAME, CA – Halo Labs, a life science instrumentation company developing tools for biologics researchers, today announced it has launched its latest aggregate and particle identification system, called Aura™.

Aura is the next generation of the Horizon®, Halo Labs’ popular Backgrounded Membrane Imaging (BMI) platform. With as little as 5 µL and a linear range of over 3×10⁶ particles/mL, BMI can count, size, and image aggregates and particles in the subvisible range (>1 μm). The Aura instrument now adds protein/non-protein identification using Fluorescence Membrane Microscopy (FMM) and is the only subvisible particle analyzer on the market to have 100% sample efficiency. An optional second fluorescence channel gives customers the ability to also detect lipids and other drug and process-specific particles.

“Aura is going to completely revolutionize biologic stability analysis,” said Rick Gordon, Vice President of Sales at Halo Labs. “Finally, there’s an easy way for our customers to identify if large aggregates in their samples are protein or non-protein without having to resort to slow and cumbersome methods like Raman and FTIR. Particle identification is critical to formulation development and analytical testing in all biologics because it defines the path that needs to be taken to mitigate problems. I’m extremely happy to be able to deliver this solution to our customers”.

“The wide adoption of our technology by every major biopharmaceutical company has given us a unique opportunity to listen to many customer voices,” said Robert Wicke, CEO of Halo Labs. “There is so much that this technology can offer and we are very excited to watch the Aura platform change the way stability and quality are analyzed in biologics.”

About Halo Labs

Halo Labs in Burlingame, CA, is a venture-backed scientific instrumentation and consumable company that commercializes high throughput biopharmaceutical formulation and quality control tools for subvisible particle analysis using state-of-the-art custom optics and image processing techniques. Researchers around the globe depend on Halo Labs for unprecedented insights into aggregates and subvisible particles present in their drug products via optical imaging on membranes.  Halo Labs has been the recipient of many prestigious awards and has received many research grants from agencies including DARPA, FDA, NSF, NIST, and NIH. For more information, visit www.halolabs.com.

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DATE OF RELEASE: Jul 24, 2020, 07:30 ET

GLEN ALLEN, Va. /PRNewswire/ — TCA/ GENETWORx Laboratories announced today that it has added substantial testing capacity and is now providing COVID-19 diagnostic test results in 72 hours or less to help battle the surging coronavirus epidemic. TCA/GENETWORx has performed thousands of COVID-19 tests since March and recently experienced some delays, like most other United States laboratories. In order to supply results in 72 hours or less, TCA/GENETWORx invested millions of dollars in real estate and equipment and has recruited hundreds of employees. TCA/GENETWORx is now one of the only companies in America that can confidently deliver COVID-19 test results within 72 hours from receipt of sample.

In partnership with Nucleus, TCA/GENETWORx has also created a test and sample management program called Aura. By having all patients download Aura, TCA/GENETWORx provides patients and customers including healthcare providers, universities, government, assisted living facilities, nursing homes, and other large population organizations a total end to end digital management and medical data system which provides test locations, test scheduling, sample tracking, symptom tracking, contact tracing assistance, dashboard compliance reporting, and government reporting.

Aura expedites turnaround times, reduces laboratory process time, and allows large population customers, including municipalities, state and federal governments, universities, large corporations, and others to manage the COVID-19 compliance and health of their entire workforce, student, and/or patient population.

TCA/GENETWORx has also developed an end to end program to test large inner-city populations in order to greatly reduce testing inequality. According to Brian O’Neill, Chairman of TCI/GENETWORx, this specialized testing for the inner city is desperately needed, “The age-adjusted COVID-19 death rate for African American people is 3.6 times that for whites, and the age-adjusted death rate for Hispanic/Latino people is 2.5 times that for whites. This is unconscionable and we are offering U.S. cities a managed testing solution to address this problem on a large scale.” 

The company is building capability to perform 870,000 tests per day or 26 million per month. In order to meet demand, the company launched a massive recruiting campaign called Re Employ America and is currently extending offers to 50-100 people per day. Moreover, in the company’s Glen Allen, Virginia laboratory, the TCA/GENETWORx “Families Work Here” program employs multiple generations of families. This has instilled an “all hands on deck” culture at the company which has helped it to grow to meet the demand required by the pandemic.

CEO and Co-Founder of GENETWORx William Miller is a member of one of the multi-generational families working together at Genetworx.

“I’m happy to support the U.S. and Virginia economies through our Re Employ America campaign and I’m proud to have members of my family working side by side with me at TCA/GENETWORx to help battle this pandemic,” said Miller.

Another multi-generational family employed by the company includes twenty-year laboratory testing veteran and Chief Laboratory Officer Sarah Jacobs-Helber. “My daughter and my son work here in the medical technology and operations departments. We all feel a tremendous sense of pride that we are contributing in a very real way in our different job roles at Genetworx as we all work together to perform the vital service of testing hundreds of thousands of Americans during this crisis,” she said.

Miller, who cofounded Genetworx in 2013 with two other scientists added “The heart of our lab is full of national pride and that comes from starting out as a smaller lab whose employees really want to make a difference during the country’s infectious disease crisis.”   

Please visit Genetworx.com for further information on hiring or to order testing. To keep up with the latest news about Genetworx, please follow us on Linked In. For media interviews contact: Terri C.Malenfant at tmalenfant@recoverycoa.com.

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