Orion Corporation (“Orion”) had announced last January that it was evaluating strategic alternatives of the Group’s Orion Diagnostica business division and had decided to investigate the possible sale of Orion Diagnostica as one alternative. Orion has now signed an agreement on the sale of all shares in Orion Diagnostica Oy (i.e. the Orion Diagnostica business division) to an investment fund managed by Axcel Management A/S, a leading Nordic private equity investment company (“Axcel”). The closing of the transaction is expected to take place during the second quarter of 2018. The closing is not conditional upon the parties obtaining approvals from competition law or other authorities or fulfilment of other preconditions.
The fixed purchase price is approximately EUR 163 million. In addition, Orion has a possibility to receive a variable component of EUR 60 million maximum. The payment of this variable component is based on return on investment for Axcel at the time of their exit. Orion estimates a capital gain of about EUR 128 million in other operating income for 2018. Due to the uncertainty relating to the variable component, the estimated capital gain does not include any part of the variable component.
“Orion Diagnostica has operated as an independent business and it has no material business synergies with Orion’s other operations. The sale of the division will allow us to further focus on growth and achieving our financial goals. Orion is currently working on numerous projects that target growth in our core area of the pharmaceuticals business. For example, we are actively evaluating late stage in-licensing opportunities. We also continue to invest in our own research and development activities, with new clinical trials, for example. The capital gain from the transaction will strengthen our equity position and maintain our ability to achieve our dividend distribution objective”, says Timo Lappalainen, President and CEO of Orion.
“Together with Orion Diagnostica’s management and employees, we intend to further develop the company into an even stronger operator in the global diagnostics market. On the back of an attractive customer proposition and a strong market position, we see great opportunity to grow Orion Diagnostica further both geographically and by expanding its product offering”, says Thomas Blomqvist, Partner at Axcel.
www.oriondiagnostica.com

New findings will help to identify the genetic causes of brain disorders: researchers at the Universities of Basel, Bonn and Cologne have presented a systematic catalogue of specific variable locations in the genome that influence gene activity in the human hippocampus.
Individual differences in gene regulation contribute to the development of numerous multifactorial disorders. Researchers are therefore attempting to clarify the influence of genetic variants (single-nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs) on gene expression and on the epigenetic modification of regulatory sections of the genome (DNA methylation). The German–Swiss team has now studied the genetic determinants of gene expression, as well as the process of DNA methylation in the human hippocampus.
The researchers have presented an extensive catalogue of variable locations in the genome – that is, of SNPs – that affect the activity of genes in the human hippocampus. Specifically, they have analysed the influence of more than three million SNPs, spread throughout the genome, on activity in nearby genes and the methylation of adjacent DNA sections.
The special thing about their work is that the researchers used freshly frozen hippocampus tissue obtained during surgery on 110 treatment-resistant epilepsy patients. They extracted DNA and RNA from the hippocampus tissue and, for all of the obtained samples, used microchips to determine several hundred thousand SNPs, as well as the degree of methylation at several hundred thousand locations (known as CpG dinucleotides) in the genome. Among other analyses, they measured the gene expression of over 15,000 genes using RNA microchips.
The researchers also demonstrated the preferred areas in which variably methylated CpG dinucleotides appear in the genome, and they were able to assign these to specific regulatory elements, revealing a link to brain disorders: a significant proportion of the identified SNPs that individually influence DNA methylation and gene expression in the hippocampus also contribute to the development of schizophrenia. This underlines the potentially significant role played by SNPs with a regulatory effect in the development of brain disorders.
The study’s findings will make it considerably easier to interpret evidence of genetic associations with brain disorders in the future. Of the SNPs involved in the development of brain disorders, many of those identified in recent years are located in the non-coding part of the genome. Their functional effect in cells is therefore largely unclear.

University of Baselhttps://tinyurl.com/y9uveu98

A high-sensitive blood test can aid concussed hockey players when it might be safe to return to play. In a study, researchers at Sahlgrenska Academy has identified a superior blood-based biomarker for assessing subtle brain injury.
"This could serve as an objective test a long side clinical evaluation to whether a player is fit to return to playing. Currently, we lack an objective test like this", says Dr. Pashtun Shahim, lead author of the article.
The study entails yet another step forward in the research that has been carried out in Gothenburg for several years, with focus on sports-related concussions. This time it included all Swedish ice hockey teams that played in the highest division on the men’s side, SHL, during three seasons 2012-2015. Hockey clubs from Luleå HF in the north of Sweden to Rögle BK in the south were involved in the work.
In total, 288 players were included, of which 105 suffered a concussion during the seasons in question. From 87 of these players, blood samples were taken 1, 12, 36 and 144 hours (six days) after the concussion. A fifth sample was taken at the time when the person was determined fit to return to unrestricted competition.
The purpose of the study was to compare concentrations in the blood of known biomarkers for concussion, both directly after the event and over a period of time. The results show that it was the levels of the protein neurofilament light (NfL) that had the clearest connection to the severity of concussion, measured as the number of days it took for players to return to play.
"The strength of this study is that we longitudinally followed how these biomarkers are released and cleared from the blood. What we observed was that NfL was released within an hour after the concussion, and then it increased over time in players who had prolonged symptoms", Pashtun Shahim explains.
The levels of the other biomarkers that were studied (tau, S100B and neuron-specific enolase, NSE) decreased quickly and could thereby not indicate how injured the players were after 7-10 days, a time point many players returned to play in the study.
"Currently the duration of players’ symptoms determines when it is safe to play again. The finding that serum NfL concentrations correlate with the duration of post-concussive symptoms or return to play, implicates that serum NfL might serve as an objective test of when it is safe to return to play. It is important to protect the players from developing long-term symptoms by avoiding premature return to play. Suffering additional concussion, especially when the current post-concussion symptoms are not fully resolved might have long-term consequences", says Pashtun Shahim.
"There is no need for a biomarker in order to make a diagnosis of concussion, it is a clinical diagnosis that is based on the patient’s symptoms", he continues. "What we are really after is a prognostic biomarker that helps the physicians determine which players or patients might be at increased risk of developing persistent post-concussive symptoms, and thereby adjust the level of rest and care for these players."

University of Gothenburgwww.gu.se/english/about_the_university/news-calendar/News_detail//a-high-sensitive-blood-test-when-it-is-safe-to-return-to-play-after-a-sports-related-concussion.cid1564034

University of Colorado Cancer Center researchers recently completed the largest-ever study of thyroid cancer genetics, mining the data of 583 patient samples of advanced differentiated thyroid cancer and 196 anaplastic thyroid cancers. In addition to identification of specific genes that may drive these cancers and thus provide attractive targets for treatment, the researchers found that in several samples of advanced differentiated and anaplastic thyroid cancer (the most aggressive and dangerous forms of the disease), mechanisms meant to repair faulty DNA had been broken. These broken repair mechanisms led to a subset of thyroid cancers accumulating a high number of genetic alterations – and this “high mutation burden” is a marker recognized by the FDA to recommend treatment with anti-cancer immunotherapies.
“Anaplastic thyroid cancer is a particularly terrible cancer – people wonder what makes it so bad, and advanced thyroid cancer causes significant morbidity. I’ve had a very productive relationship with Foundation Medicine, primarily to study rare salivary gland cancers and I’m pleased that we’ve been able to extend our collaboration to the study of thyroid cancers to hopefully answer some of these questions,” says Daniel Bowles, MD, clinical and translational investigator at CU Cancer Center and Head of Cancer Research at the Denver Veterans Administration Medical Center.
Bowles worked with first author Nikita Pozdeyev, MD, PhD, to analyse tumour samples submitted by oncologists from around the United States to Foundation Medicine for genetic analysis that could inform treatment strategies. Interestingly, the fact that clinicians who submitted these samples were specifically seeking possible treatment strategies meant that the majority of samples were from advanced cancers.
“Genetic analysis of early-stage thyroid cancers is most often not necessary – we successfully treat these tumours with surgery and radioactive iodine,” Pozdeyev says. “But with distant metastases, genetic information becomes important for treatment. Because oncologists had sought this genetic information, our study is enriched for advanced cases.”
The researchers point out that even large treatment centres are likely to only a few of these most dangerous, anaplastic thyroid cancers every year. Due to the current study’s industry-academia collaboration, the researchers were able to explore 196 of these anaplastic thyroid cancers, “giving us sufficient analytical power to use machine learning and statistical analysis to make sense of the data,” Pozdeyev says.
In addition to finding that some anaplastic thyroid cancers carried a high overall mutation burden that could make immunotherapy an attractive treatment option, the group found specific genetic changes driving anaplastic cancers, including amplifications of the genes KDR, KIT and PDGFRA. These genes encode a kind of on-off switch called “receptor tyrosine kinases” that many cancer cells use to speed their growth and proliferation. In this case, these receptor tyrosine kinases happen to be targeted by the drug lenvatinib, which earned FDA approval for use in kidney cancer.  In collaboration with Drs. Bryan Haugen and Rebecca Schweppe, the researchers treated a cohort of thyroid cancer cell lines with lenvatinib, finding that it was the cell line with amplification of KDR, KIT and PDGFRA that was especially sensitive to the drug, hinting that treatment with lenvatinib may be an attractive strategy against a subset of anaplastic thyroid cancers.

University of Colorado Cancer Centerwww.coloradocancerblogs.org/largest-ever-study-of-thyroid-cancer-genetics-finds-new-mutations-suggests-immunotherapy/

The two most common types of inflammatory bowel diseases are ulcerous colitis and Crohn’s disease. These are diagnosed by camera inside the gut, and by investigating small samples of the gut (biopsies). The diagnosis is often difficult, and if the wrong diagnosis is made, there may be severe consequences for the patients, because the treatments and medications are different between the two diseases.
The development of new and improved diagnostic methods is therefore important. The Sandelin group at Department of Biology/BRIC, University of Copenhagen has, in collaboration with clinicians from Herlev and Hvidovre hospitals and scientists from Roskilde University and the Technical University of Denmark, made new discoveries may contribute to improved methods for diagnosis.
– We do not know the molecular cause of these diseases. Much of what we know comes from genetic studies, where several key genes have been identified. However, 70% of genetic mutations that are linked to the diseases are located outside of genes that code for proteins. We believe that many of these mutations have an effect of the regulation of the genes, and thereby the disease, says Prof Sandelin who led the study, says Albin Sandelin, professor at Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen.
The scientists used a state-of-the-art method to map regulatory regions and their activity in patients with ulcerous colitis or Crohn’s disease and compared these with control subjects. They found that mutations associated to the disease were often located within regulatory regions active in the disease. This information is important for understanding the effect of such mutations. By combining these data with computer-based models and nano-fluidics technology, they could identify 35 regulatory regions whose activity could distinguish ulcerous colitis, Crohn’s disease and control subjects with high accuracy. These findings may open new avenues for new and improved diagnosis methods for inflammatory disease.

EurekAlertwww.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-04/fos–nmf042618.php