Expecting data from Theranos, lab experts get new product

[...] what some of the nation’s top lab-testing scientists and researchers gathered in a packed ballroom at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia got was the introduction of a new device.

Founder Elizabeth Holmes, facing a two-year ban by U.S. regulators from running a clinical testing company, used the session at the American Association for Clinical Chemistry’s annual scientific meeting to introduce the “miniLab” blood-testing device, a 95-pound diagnostic tool that can fit on a tabletop.

“It is a bait and switch,” said Geoffrey Baird, associate professor of laboratory medicine at the University of Washington.

AACC President Patricia Jones, a professor of pathology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, introduced Holmes, saying that the session wasn’t an endorsement of the company.

The company said it has developed a test for Zika virus with the miniLab machine that’s been submitted to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Lab experts have been asking for years for Theranos to present its data at scientific meetings, said David Koch, a former president of AACC, and a pathology and lab medicine professor at Emory University.