Siemens Healthineers AG

ARPA-H estimates that most people in the U.S. live too far away from properly equipped stroke centers to undergo life-saving procedures to remove blood clots from the brain. \n The U.S. government’s Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health has launched a new funding program aimed at the development of autonomous robotics—including a special focus on systems designed to intervene in cases of stroke, as well as a broader remit covering a range of surgical procedures that could potentially be performed without human hands.The agency, known as ARPA-H, is seeking proposals from organizations with expertise in surgery, imaging and artificial intelligence, including academic and scientific research institutions as well as the private sector—and is encouraging applicants to form multi-disciplinary teams.ARPA-H, which first launched in late 2022, places stroke as one of the top causes of death and disability in the U.S. The agency further estimates that most people in the country live too far away from properly equipped and staffed centers to undergo the life-saving procedures necessary to remove blood clots from the brain.Treatment delays can increase the risk of long-term complications, ARPA-H notes, and only about 12% of people in need receive a thrombectomy at all. The deployment of automated neurovascular systems could ultimately help broaden access, the agency figures.At the same time, for less urgent procedures such as biopsies and kidney stone removals, ARPA-H said the future development of microrobotic systems could deliver less invasive care without specialized equipment. “We envision care extending beyond the four walls of a clinic to anywhere you can take a container of microbots,” the program’s manager, Ileana Hancu, said in a statement. Hancu joined ARPA-H in 2023 from the National Cancer Institute, where she was a director in the image-guided interventions branch. Earlier this year, Stryker and Siemens Healthineers launched a collaboration to develop a neurovascular robot for strokes and brain aneurysms—combining the former’s clot-removing hardware with the latter’s imaging expertise. Meanwhile, Medtronic tapped the Spain-based software developer Methinks AI to develop programs to spot strokes early and direct clinicians to the appropriate treatment devices. Johns Hopkins University also showed that an AI-powered robot—trained on videos of previous surgeries—could learn how to perform hands-free tasks during gallbladder removal procedures.  More recently, this month the robotics developer Sentante showed that its haptic catheter-control system could be used to perform a thrombectomy remotely—with an ocean-spanning telesurgery demonstration connecting participants in Scotland and Florida. Performed on a human cadaver, an operator at Baptist Health in Jacksonville was able to pull a clot thousands of miles away at the University of Dundee. Sentante’s system received a breakthrough designation from the FDA in September, with the company plotting a 2026 market launch for peripheral interventions.  Meanwhile, ARPA-H has also begun delivering cash to gene and cell therapy programs, including DNA-editing approaches and in vivo treatments aimed at autoimmune disorders. The agency saw a change in leadership at the start of this year, with its founding director, Renee Wegrzyn, being removed by the Trump administration. This week, the Department of Health and Human Services formally announced ARPA-H’s new director, Alicia Jackson, who served as the founder and CEO of Evernow and previously as the deputy director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s biotech office.

The rumors are now a reality. Abbott Laboratories is acquiring Exact Sciences for $21 billion,  marking what could be the biggest medtech deal of 2025. The deal’s announcement comes less than 24 hours after Bloomberg broke the news that a potential deal between the two could be in the works. The Abbott Park, IL-based company said the deal is expected to close in 2Q26. News of the official deal helped shares of Exact jump another 17%. When Bloomberg dropped a report on the rumored deal, shares went up about 25% Madison, WI-based Exact Sciences is a molecular diagnostics company that specializes in the detection of early-stage cancers. Cologuard, a noninvasive colorectal cancer screening option, is one of the company’s flagship products. The company also develops Oncotype DX, which informs personalized treatment decisions for patients with breast cancer; Oncodetect, which identifies molecular residual disease (MRD) to help assess the risk of recurrence and guide follow-up care; and Cancerguard, a multi-cancer early detection blood test. "Exact Sciences' innovation, its strong brand and customer-focused execution are unrivaled in the cancer diagnostics space, and its presence and strengths are complementary to our own," said Robert B. Ford, chairman and CEO, Abbott. "Abbott has repeatedly taken on the world's most challenging health issues and made a meaningful impact on the lives of people in areas such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and infectious diseases. We're excited to bring Exact Sciences' people and know-how into Abbott so that together, we can take on the global challenge of cancer." The proposed deal could help boost Abbott’s weakened diagnostics portfolio. The diagnostic sector was at its height during the beginning of the pandemic, and Abbott , along with Hologic , saw huge boosts in revenue due to extremely high demand for COVID-19 tests. At the time, analysts dubbed the revenue boosts “COVID cash.” Many diagnostic firms put those COVID  cash earnings to good use by making multiple acquisitions. But as time went on and the demand for COVID-19 tests waned , that revenue shrank significantly. Joshua Jennings, MD, an analyst with TD Cowen, wrote about Exact’s potential impact on Abbott’s diagnostic division in a research note. “COVID testing roll-offs, USAID defunding, and China VBP pressures have pushed diagnostics into a 3% to 5% organic growth range - well below the unit’s long-term trajectory,” Jennings wrote in a research note. Exact Sciences is projected to generate more than $3 billion in revenue in 2025, with a high-teens organic sales growth rate. Once the transaction is completed, Exact Sciences will become a subsidiary of Abbott, and Abbott's total diagnostics sales will exceed $12 billion annually. Jennings went on to write, “Acquiring Exact Sciences could provide an immediate solution to that growth deficit. Based on current assumptions, integrating Exact would add roughly 2.5 percentage points of incremental organic growth to Abbott’s diagnostics segment during the early post-deal period, lifting the business back to ~7% organic growth, essentially restoring the franchise to its historical baseline before pandemic distortions emerged.” Size of the deal In the post-pandemic market, there are only a few deals that rival Abbott’s proposed acquisition of Exact Sciences. BTIG Analyst Marie Thibault listed the deals in a recent research note. “In terms of size, this potential deal would rival the likes of Johnson & Johnson’s acquisition of Abiomed in 2022 and Siemens Healthineers’ acquisition of Varian in 2021 .”

Collaboration integrates advanced blood-based biomarkers to accelerate diagnostics and therapies for brain disorders NEW YORK, Nov. 11, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Cohen Veterans Bioscience, Inc. (CVB), a non-profit 501(c)(3) biomedical research and technology organization and Siemens Healthineers AG (SMMNY), a global leader in medical technology, today announced a landmark collaboration to enhance the national Normative Neuroimaging Library (NNL) with advanced blood-based biomarker data. The NNL , established by CVB, with leading academic centers, is one of the largest standardized repositories of high-quality brain imaging and clinical data from nearly 1,900 healthy adults. This unique reference dataset enables research to distinguish normative brain structure and function from disease-related changes—critical for improving diagnostic precision, validating biomarkers, and accelerating therapeutic development in neurology and psychiatry. Through this collaboration, Siemens Healthineers will contribute data relating to its high-performance biomarker assay, Atellica IM Neurofilament Light Chain assay* and other biomarkers recognized as sensitive indicators of neuronal injury and neurodegenerative processes. Integration of these blood-based biomarkers with imaging and clinical data will create the first multimodal normative reference standard for brain health research. "This expansion of the NNL represents a breakthrough resource for the field," says Magali Haas, M.D., Ph.D., Board Chair at CVB. "By linking blood-based biomarkers with imaging and clinical measures, we expect to advance multimodal modeling, with the aim of improving diagnosis and accelerating the development of new treatments for those living with brain disorders." "We expect this collaboration to enable laboratory insights with the goal of translating into clinical impact, said Arejas J. Uzgiris, PhD, neurology innovation lead and head of the Center for Innovation in Diagnostics for North America at Siemens Healthineers. "Broad access to advanced diagnostics data will accelerate research in brain disorders and other neurodegenerative diseases, which can lead to earlier, more accurate diagnoses, more effective prevention efforts, and help to identify patients for disease modifying treatments worldwide." Cohen Veterans Bioscience (CVB) is a non-profit 501(c)(3) biomedical research and technology organization dedicated to advancing brain health by fast-tracking precision diagnostics and tailored therapeutics. The NNL study was conducted in partnership with University of Virginia, University of Utah and the Baylor College of Medicine. To learn more about the NNL and our other biomarker health and computational modeling disease research efforts visit . *Available as Research Use Only in the U.S, not for use in clinical or diagnostic procedures. Commercial availability outside of the U.S. subject to local regulatory requirements. SOURCE Cohen Veterans Bioscience 21% more press release views with Request a Demo