At this point, if given a choice between taking a gig with Ariosa and getting ebola, I'd say go with the ebola - you'll at least get maybe 21 days before lights out.
Ariosa is screwed. They used LabCorp to distribute their trisomy test. Then Ariosa got sued for patent infringement by (1) Sequenom, (2) Verinata, and then (3) Illumina - a huge company that makes the machines Ariosa's test uses. Not only did Ariosa get sued, but so did LabCorp. But the claims against LabCorp were dropped after LabCorp cancelled their exclusive license to distribute the Ariosa test. Then in August, LabCorp announced they will no longer market Ariosa's test, but instead are marketing their own test (which they presumably have a license for from the company(ies) that sued them with Ariosa.
In April, Ariosa was all teed up with an IPO and actually priced it I believe when Illumina sued them on another patent - blowing up the IPO - and the financing.
So now Ariosa is swamped with lawsuits from three companies (at least three), has their biggest distributor kick them to the curb and market their own test (LabCorp), has no good financing vehicle to raise the money that the IPO was going to, faces a cutoff of their equipment license from Illumina in January or February 2015, and now has to market and distribute by themself having lost the LabCorp relationship and the customers that will likely stay with LabCorp and use LabCorp's test.
Thus, Ariosa needs live bodies to go out and push their product. How they can pay for this is extremely unclear. They face a collapsing market for their test in an increasingly competitive marketspace and a need to hire salesforce without the financial resources to do that in a meaningful way.
In my opinion. they will be out of cash shortly. I don't see how they can survive. It's like an airplane in the mid-Pacific a thousand miles from the nearest land and with enough fuel to fly maybe a dozen more miles - best case 100 miles. Would you take a seat ont hat airplane?
