Ciphergen sells its proteomics business to Bio-Rad

FREMONT, Calif.—Bio-Rad Laboratories Inc. announced in late summer that it reached agree­ment with Ciphergen Biosystems to acquire its proprietary pro­teomics instruments business which includes Ciphergen's surface-enhanced laser desorp­tion/ionization (SELDI) tech­nology, its ProteinChip Arrays and all accompanying software. Purchase price for this business line is $20 million. Also announced was Bio-Rad's invest­ment of $3 million in Ciphergen. The two transactions clear the way for Ciphergen's continued transition from an instrument supplier to a supplier of special­ized diagnostic products to the clinical market.

Under the terms of the sale agree­ment, Bio-Rad will take over man­ufacturing and sale of the SELDI technology to the life sciences mar­ket where it is used in proteomics applications that include biomark­er discovery, characterization and validation. Ciperhgen will retain exclusive rights to market the same technology to the diagnostics mar­ket and will obtain the instruments through an exclusive supply agree­ment with Bio-Rad. The compa­nies will also collaborate to identify potential new customers interested in using SELDI technology to com­mercialize biomarker discovery.

Ciphergen executives were not available by press time to comment directly concerning the transac­tion. However, in a press release announcing the deal, Gail S. Page, president and CEO of Ciphergen, says: "Ciphergen has in place the dedicated management team and financial resources to build an exciting, attractive diagnostics business for long-term growth and sustained shareholder value. With Bio-Rad as a strategic part­ner, Ciphergen can accelerate its transformation into a leading spe­cialized diagnostics provider."

Strategically for Bio-Rad it made sense to pick up Ciphergen's SELDI and ProteinArray prod­ucts, once the company decided to sell the assets and focus its efforts in the diagnostics arena. In fact, the companies had ongoing dis­cussions over the previous few years to look at different ways to work together to increase the sale of these products in the market.

"We've had a long-standing rela­tionship with them that had looked at a bunch of areas for clinical research and for them to provide a SELDI tool in the Bio-Rad product line," says Brad Krutchfield, VP of Bio-Rad's life science group. "But they have more than 700 of these tools placed in the market that have generated a number of potential biomarkers that are in evaluation for becoming a clinical tool and that is how their business evolved."

What makes the acquisition via­ble for Bio-Rad is the technology's parallel application to drug dis­covery. "What's interesting here, and unique, is that the discovery tool is exactly the same tool as the one used for diagnostics," says Krutchfield.

The SELDI technology also fills a gap for Bio-Rad, which is pri­marily known as a leader in the area of 2D gels. "We have a fairly extensive line of products start­ing with gene expression analysis and gene expression modulation," Krutchfield notes. "Certainly, in the workflow of protein separation and protein function we see this as complementing a suite of prod­ucts around quantifying protein expression as we do with our mul­tiplex immunoassay system and a new line we just introduced which is a protein-protein interaction array instrument. The Ciphergen SELDI product will help us look at complex mixtures of proteins in various states."

In addition to the current SELDI and ProteinArray products, Bio-Rad picked up intellectual proper­ty in mass spec technology. It also acquired a product that is in late development stages.

"This technology allows a com­plex protein mixture to increase the intensity of low-abundance proteins," Krutchfield notes. "We see that as a really valuable prod­uct that fits into our conventional proteomic workflow."