Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes at Glamour’s Women of the Year Awards last November in New York. Photo: Larry Busacca/Getty Images 
 
 Theranos Inc. withdrew its request for emergency clearance of a Zika-virus blood test after federal regulators found that the company didn’t include proper patient safeguards in a study of the new test, said people familiar with the matter. 
 
 The move is another setback for the Palo Alto, Calif., company as it tries to recover from crippling regulatory sanctions that followed revelations by The Wall Street Journal of shortcomings in Theranos’s technology and operations. Theranos has said it is appealing. 
 
 Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes announced Aug. 1 a new blood-testing device called miniLab that she said was designed for use outside a clinical laboratory and could run accurate tests from a few drops of blood. 
 
 Ms. Holmes also said Theranos was seeking clearance for its Zika test, and a company news release said Theranos had collected finger-stick blood samples from patients, including in the Dominican Republic, and run the tests on the new miniLab device, which showed that the Zika test worked. 
 
 But during an inspection by the Food and Drug Administration earlier this month, regulators concluded that Theranos had collected some data supporting the accuracy of the Zika test without implementing a patient-safety protocol approved by an institutional review board, according to the people familiar with the matter. Institutional review boards ensure that patients are treated safely and ethically during medical studies. 
 
 “We hope that our decision to withdraw the Zika submission voluntarily is further evidence of our commitment to engage positively with the agency,” said Dave Wurtz, Theranos’s vice president of regulatory, quality and clinical affairs. An FDA spokeswoman declined to comment on the inspection, citing the agency’s policy on pending product applications. 
 
 It isn’t clear if the problem affected any patients. Some data in the submission was collected under review-board-approved protocols, the people said. Theranos didn’t contest the agency’s findings and withdrew its submission for authorization of the new Zika test, according to people familiar with the matter. 
 
 Theranos executives told employees about the setback during a staff meeting last week, one person familiar with the meeting said. 
 
 In an email to Theranos investors Saturday, the company said it plans to collect additional data requested by the FDA under properly reviewed protocols and resubmit the Zika application. The letter said Theranos would handle a submission for an Ebola test “in the same manner.” 
 
 The miniLab that Ms. Holmes, Theranos’s chief executive, unveiled to laboratory scientists in Philadelphia signaled a potential shift in the closely held company’s business model and a new source of revenue. FDA approval of the miniLab would allow Theranos to sell the device for outside use even if she is banned from owning or running a lab for at least two years. 
 
 The federal agency that oversees labs, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, imposed the ban and other penalties in July because of problems it found at a Theranos lab. The agency said the deficiencies affected test accuracy and put patients at risk. 
 
 Theranos is appealing the lab’s closing, Ms. Holmes’s ban and other sanctions imposed by CMS and is continuing to negotiate a possible settlement. 
 
 Theranos also has said it is doing no patient testing at the lab where the deficiencies were found. In its investor email Saturday, Theranos said its appeal will argue that CMS hasn’t “fully accounted for the progress we have made toward correcting” problems. 
 
 A CMS spokesman said Tuesday the agency is “reviewing a copy of Theranos’s appeal.” He declined further comment. 
 
 Theranos has pursued a manufacturing-focused business model before. An initial agreement with former retail partner Walgreens, now part of Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc., WBA 0.14 % called for Theranos to sell blood-testing devices directly to the drugstore giant and have Walgreens perform the tests, according to a 2010 contract between the two companies. 
 
 The arrangement later shifted as Theranos sought tighter control over its proprietary technology and operations, according to people familiar with the negotiations. Michael Polzin, a Walgreens spokesman, declined to comment. 
 
 The FDA’s inspection in August was triggered by Theranos’s request for “emergency-use authorization” to sell its new Zika test, a person familiar with the matter said. 
 
 The FDA has cleared Zika tests from several other companies since invoking a rule allowing the agency to lower hurdles for new medical products during emergencies. 
 
 An epidemic of the mosquito-borne Zika virus has swept through parts of South and Central America and reached into South Florida in recent months. The virus can cause serious birth defects in developing fetuses, including distinctively undersized heads and brain abnormalities. 
 
 Theranos’s news release on Aug. 1 as Ms. Holmes spoke at the American Association for Clinical Chemistry’s annual meeting said the company believed no other test for Zika that uses tiny blood samples collected by finger sticks was available. 
 
 “Theranos scientists conducted the tests reflected in the AACC presentation in 2016 under IRB-approved protocols,” the company added, referring to the review-board process. 
 
 Theranos told investors that company officials “recognized” during the FDA’s inspection that some patient data was collected before the review-board protocols were in place. 
 
 After an inspection in August 2015, the FDA declared Theranos’s finger-stick collection device, called the “nanotainer,” an uncleared medical device, and the company said it stopped using it on patients in the U.S. The agency earlier approved the use of nanotainers for a herpes test. 
 
 Theranos said in its news release that it used the nanotainer as part of its blood-collection system for the Zika study, which included the Dominican patients. 
 
 Separately, Theranos’s general counsel, Heather King, is leaving the company to return to law firm Boies Schiller & Flexner LLP, according to the email sent to investors. 
 
 Theranos announced Ms. King’s hiring in May 2015, and she led the company’s legal response to accusations of technological snags. Boies Schiller Chairman David Boies is a Theranos director. 
 
 “We appreciate Heather’s leadership and we wish her the very best,” Theranos said in its email to investors Saturday. 
 
 In a sign that the blows to Theranos’s credibility during the past year continue to hang over the company, leaders of the University of Washington’s medical laboratory division balked when a Theranos manager approached the lab in late July about working with Theranos on research. 
 
 “This is a disgraced company that has not responded to the sanctions in an honorable way,” the lab’s compliance officer wrote in an email to the University of Washington technician who fielded the inquiry from Theranos. “As such, do not set up a client account for this company,” according to the email, which was reviewed by the Journal. 
 
 Write to John Carreyrou at john.carreyrou@wsj.com and Christopher Weaver at christopher.weaver@wsj.com ||||| The embattled blood testing firm's move comes after regulators found Theranos failed to implement proper patient safeguards in its study. (Reuters) 
 
 It was supposed to be the beginning of a new era when Elizabeth Holmes, the chief executive of the beleaguered blood-testing company Theranos, took the stage at a major scientific conference earlier this month and presented a new technology and data on a Zika test. The company, Holmes told thousands of scientists, had already submitted the test to federal regulators for emergency-use authorization. 
 
 But federal inspectors visited Theranos soon after and found that some of the Zika data collection had gone forward without an essential safeguard to prevent patient harm, according to a Wall Street Journal report published late Tuesday. The company confirmed that it has withdrawn its Zika test from consideration. 
 
 The setback comes as a separate agency — the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services — considers Theranos's appeal of harsh sanctions that included a two-year ban on Holmes owning or operating a laboratory after numerous deficiencies were found at its Newark, Calif. laboratory. 
 
 "It's unfortunate for Theranos to be caught in another compliance issue so soon after the major issues were reported with their clinical testing laboratory," Stephen Master, director of the central lab at Weill Cornell Medical College, wrote in an email. "Given the amount of scrutiny they're under, I would have expected them to be particularly careful about the regulatory issues surrounding research on human subjects." 
 
 [How Theranos’s reboot could backfire] 
 
 Citing unnamed people familiar with the matter, the Wall Street Journal reported that inspectors found that some of Theranos's Zika data was collected without approval by an institutional review board, a committee that performs a critical stopgap function in medicine — overseeing and monitoring research, to make sure it doesn't pose a threat to patient safety. 
 
 "The FDA cannot confirm the existence of or comment on any current/pending product applications," agency spokeswoman Tara Goodin wrote in an email. 
 
 According to the company's earlier news release about the Zika test, finger-stick blood samples were collected from patients in the Dominican Republic and shipped to Palo Alto, Calif., where the company is headquartered. That release also specified that the data that were presented in its scientific presentation in early August were conducted under protocols that had been approved by an institutional review board. 
 
 The company plans to resubmit the test for approval. 
 
 “In my mind, this was a positive interaction with the FDA, and I’m grateful for its collaborative approach," Dave Wurtz, Theranos's vice president of regulatory, quality and clinical affairs said in a statement. "We hope that our decision to withdraw the Zika submission voluntarily is further evidence of our commitment to engage positively with the agency. We are confident in the Zika tests and will resubmit it.” 
 
 Theranos also announced last week that it was appealing sanctions imposed by regulators. 
 
 Since the announcement of the sanctions, "Theranos has made substantial progress toward correcting the deficiencies CMS identified, including appointing new laboratory leadership; enhancing Theranos’ clinical policies and procedures; and revamping training programs," the company said in a statement. 
 
 CMS spokesman Tony Salters said the appeal is under review and that as with any ongoing enforcement issue, the agency would not comment further. 
 
 Here's what you need to know about Theranos, a biotech company founded in 2003 by Stanford dropout Elizabeth Holmes. (Jayne Orenstein/The Washington Post) 
 
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 Emails reveal that concerns about Theranos’s FDA compliance date back years ||||| That didn't take long. Theranos pulled the emergency request for its Zika-testing miniLab following an FDA inspection that revealed shortcomings with patient protocol, according to The Wall Street Journal . WSJ's sources say that while the blood-testing company had data showing that the testing methods worked, the evidence collected was done without "implementing a patient-safety protocol approved by an institutional review board." 
 
 Meaning, the experiments didn't have the type of oversight necessary to ensure that they were performed in stringent, controlled ways that would consistently provide accurate results and wouldn't harm the test subjects. The company says that it "recognized" that some of its data was gleaned before the needed protocols were in place. 
 
 Theranos plans to appeal the Food and Drug Administration's ruling, of course, and collect the extra information requested by the FDA before trying the certification process again. Same goes for when the company attempts certification for its Ebola test as well. 
 
 The miniLab itself was a way to sidestep founder Elizabeth Holmes' two-year ban from owning or running a lab or her own, precisely because the device was made for outside use. All of this raises the question of how long Jennifer Lawrence will have to wait for a final script for Theranos: The Movie. Seriously, this saga just keeps getting better.
– And the hits keep on coming for medical technology company Theranos. In an attempt to move on following a federal criminal investigation into its laboratories, Theranos announced it was submitting a Zika blood test for emergency-use authorization at the start of August, the Washington Post reports. Theranos claimed it successfully trialed the miniLab Zika test on blood samples from the Dominican Republic. But according to the Wall Street Journal, FDA regulators discovered that some of those trials were done without "implementing a patient-safety protocol approved by an institutional review board." Now Theranos has withdrawn its clearance request for the Zika test. "Given the amount of scrutiny they're under, I would have expected them to be particularly careful about the regulatory issues surrounding research on human subjects," one expert tells the Post. Theranos is already facing sanctions, and founder Elizabeth Holmes (soon to be played onscreen by Jennifer Lawrence) was banned from owning or operating a laboratory for two years. The miniLab, which is meant to be used outside a laboratory, was an attempt to get around that ban, Engadget reports. Theranos plans on appealing the FDA's ruling while also redoing the trials and resubmitting for clearance. "In my mind, this was a positive interaction with the FDA," the Post quotes one Theranos executive as saying.