Walgreens is beginning to break up with Theranos

The bad news just keeps piling on for Theranos, following yesterday’s announcement from the US government that its blood testing technology “jeopardizes” patients’ health. Walgreens, the company’s main retail partner, said today that it’ll be shutting down its Theranos Wellness Center in Palo Alto, California. Additionally, the pharmacy will no longer send blood samples to Theranos’ lab in Newark, New Jersey. And, to top it all off, Walgreens also says that blood tests from one of the 40 Theranos Wellness Centers it hosts in Arizona must go to a third-party lab, or Theranos’ Phoenix lab, not the Newark facility.

Theranos built up a reputation as a forward-thinking health technology company after developing a blood testing device that requires only a few drops of blood, rather than larger vials of blood. But its technology has come into question over the past year; in October, the FDA revealed that it had approved only one of Theranos’ finger prick tests (for herpes), out of the 100 tests the startup initially claimed. At that point, Walgreens halted an expansion of Theranos’ test centers to the rest of its stores, so today’s announcement isn’t too surprising.

[Photo credit: Michael Kovac/Getty Images/Vanity Fair]

Source: Businesswire (PR)