5. Federal court prepares for trial of former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes
A federal judge has ordered the FDA and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to produce documents pertinent to the government’s criminal case against former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes and president Sunny Balwani, which is expected to go to trial in 2020.
Holmes and Theranos were once Silicon Valley darlings, with Holmes claiming that her company was set to revolutionize blood testing with technology that could analyze tiny amounts of blood. Investigative reporting, though, soon dismantled the claims Holmes was making about Theranos’ technology, raising questions about whether she and others had misled investors. The downward spiral culminated in the 2018 shutdown of the company, with the SEC criminally charging Holmes and Balwani over what it described as a “massive fraud.” Theranos has become so infamous in the public imagination that other companies seeking to innovate in the blood testing space now have a higher bar when it comes to proving their technology.