Agilent buys Biocius Life Sciences for undisclosed amount
Biocius, based in Wakefield, Massachusetts, US, is the developer of the RapidFire drug-screening platform: a high-throughput, automated sample processing system which the company claims is up to 100 times more effective than conventional mass spectrometry (MS) screening methods.
The RapidFire platform is designed to allow researchers to better understand a drug's biochemical properties. Agilent believes RapidFire, coupled with its own TOF, Q-TOF and triple quadrupole LC/MS systems offers potential clients an “unrivalled MS drug screening solution”.
“With this technology and the team that developed it now part of Agilent, we can expand our reach in the pharmaceutical and clinical mass spectrometry markets,” said Gustavo Salem, vice president of Agilent's biological systems division within the company's life sciences group, “Agilent's breadth of global resources and market strategy are the best fit for Biocius to drive RapidFire into new markets going forward.”
As a result of the deal all 25 of Biocius's employees based at its Wakefield headquarters will join Agilent.
Highly valued
In a statement released shortly after striking the deal, Biocius's former chairman and CEO, Jeffrey Leathe, said: “RapidFire instrumentation and research services are highly valued by our leading drug discovery researchers around the globe.
“As we continued to leverage those relationships and our experience into current and new markets, the natural evolution of the company was to partner with a world-class organisation to accelerate our application development and further market penetration”
Latest acquisitions
Agilent's purchase of Biocius represents the second such acquisition for the company in the last week after an announcement on Monday that the Californian firm had acquired Edinburgh, UK-based electrophoresis specialists, Lab901.
Lab 901 employs around 45 people and manufactures products for DNA, RNA and protein research, including its flagship ScreenTape System. Agilent said it believed the acquisition of Lab 901 would “compliment our strong electrophoresis portfolio.”
