ARUP Laboratories, the largest nonprofit reference laboratory in the US, has launched an Innovation Central Laboratory to facilitate collaboration with pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and other industry partners.
The Innovation Central Laboratory will serve as an ecosystem for validating technologies and accelerating next generation diagnostics from concept to commercialisation.
“The Innovation Central Laboratory represents a bold step forward in diagnostic medicine,” said Tracy George, ARUP chief scientific officer and president of ARUP’s Innovation Business Unit.
“By building and validating tests that are truly commercial-ready, we’re not just accelerating innovation, we’re ensuring that groundbreaking diagnostics can be adopted in real-world laboratories to improve patient care globally.”
The Innovation Central Laboratory provides an opportunity for biotechnology and pharmaceutical partners to collaborate with ARUP on early-stage exploration and refinement of novel diagnostic concepts outside of routine clinical workflows.
The launch of the Innovation Central Laboratory is the latest in a series of developments at ARUP. In April 2025, it launched a blood-based biomarker assay to determine whether cognitive decline symptoms in patients ages 60 years and older are related to Alzheimer’s disease (AD) pathology. Blood-based biomarkers provide a more accessible and less invasive diagnostic tool than standard methods, such as amyloid positron emission tomography imaging, and may facilitate earlier detection of AD.
ARUP has also partnered with Tasso Inc. to develop at-home blood testing services that will support clinical research. ARUP has already validated several assays using capillary blood microsamples, which are collected using the Tasso device, and will serve as the performing laboratory of the combined service.
ARUP’s central pathology review service has also played a role in supporting clinical trials, including a promising therapy for patients with nonadvanced systemic mastocytosis.
Other current initiatives of the ARUP Central Innovation Laboratory include developing assays for rare and underrecognised diseases, improving genomic sequencing technologies, operationalising artificial intelligence (AI) and digital pathology solutions into laboratory workflows, and facilitating biomarker discovery and development of new assays for neurodegenerative diseases.