Neonatal screening, not only prevention Doc: rising market registers entry of Helyx Industries

Helyx Industries - formerly Ulisse Biomed - officially enters the Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) market and the Genome Project of the Apulia Region thanks to an agreement with Revvity Italia. An entry that takes into account the developing market of next-generation genetic sequencing technologies (NGS, precisely), which allow millions of DNA fragments to be analysed in parallel, making it possible to study a very large number of genetic targets simultaneously.

This is an area in which the Apulia Region has been a pioneer in Italy and is still the standard-bearer, as it has been waging a relentless battle against rare diseases to be discovered in the cradle with the Apulia Genome Programme for years: since 1 January of this year, then, in the medical genetics laboratory of the Di Venere Hospital in Bari, the 'panel' of neonatal screenings has been further expanded with the genetic analysis extended from 406 to 433 genes and the possibility of including a number of diagnosable diseases that has risen from 561 to 597, equal to 36 new conditions that can be detected at an early stage. "An advanced prevention model," as Fabiano Amati, former Apulia councillor for the budget and as regional councillor 'father' of the first regional law in this field, has defined it, "based on rapid diagnosis, immediate care and integration between political sensitivity, almost total family adherence, laboratory and clinic, with the aim of guaranteeing every child all the most innovative health opportunities from the very first day of life.

Words to live by: the 2 million patients with rare diseases in Italy know this perfectly well, and so do the institutions, so much so that the latest budget law allocates 238 million euros from 2026 onwards for the strengthening of prevention and early diagnosis programmes.

If NGS technology is by now a crucial piece of the differential diagnosis also in cancer prevention, the resonance of health benefits is also expected on the market with growth rates between 21-22% per year in Europe and worldwide: according to estimates, the turnover of Next Generation Sequencing is destined to reach 14.7 billion dollars in Europe and over a billion in Italia by 2030.
It is in this context that Helyx Industries - a healthcare biotech company active in the diagnostics, theranostics and therapeutics sectors - enters the NGS market, with the launch of a dedicated division that strengthens the Group's position as a strategic player in molecular diagnostics.

In particular, Helyx Industries officially enters the NGS market and the Genome Programme thanks to an agreement with Revvity Italia, which has been awarded a public tender to provide tests and instrumentation with the aim of analysing the DNA of newborn babies in order to detect at an early stage more than 400 possible metabolic disorders and relevant and curable rare diseases, on which clinical and/or therapeutic treatment can be applied. After a pilot phase starting in June 2024, which involved 9 neonatal intensive care units and far exceeded expectations in terms of adherence, the project entered the universal screening phase in 2025. Therefore, within this framework, Helyx will develop, produce and supply Revvity Italia with customised screening kits based on the requirements provided by Revvity.