A Columbus Biotech Lab Scales Up Its Diagnostics Work

Helix Diagnostics, a Columbus biotech company, is expanding a laboratory that develops tests for infectious disease and early cancer screening. The company says the larger facility will let it move more of its work from research into validated, deployable diagnostics.

The distance between a promising test in a lab and a reliable one in clinical use is long and littered with failures. Scaling up means building the rigorous validation and quality systems that turn a scientific result into something a doctor can trust.

Company leaders framed the expansion as a bet on Columbus's growing life-sciences base, drawing on talent from the region's universities and hospitals. The near-term focus, they said, is a handful of tests already showing promise.