CARLSBAD, Calif.—Life Technologies has announced theacquisition of cancer bioinformatics company Compendia Bioscience. While nofinancial terms were disclosed, Life Technologies expects the transaction to beneutral to earnings for this year and accretive to its overall ROIC by 2015.Following the acquisition, Compendia's existing business will continue to beled by its current management team. Arul Chinnaiyan, M.D., Ph.D., co-founder ofCompendia, will serve as a strategic advisor to Life Technologies, and DanielR. Rhodes, CEO and co-founder of Compendia, will join Life Technologies afterthe transaction is complete.
"We have created the optimal foundation to driveprogress in personalized medicine," Gregory T. Lucier, chairman and CEO ofLife Technologies, said in a statement. "By combining the acquisitions ofPinpoint Genomics, Navigenics and Compendia, we now possess the full spectrumcapability to develop and commercialize high-value cancer diagnostics wherethere is currently great unmet need."
Compendia has extensive oncology expertise, with a datacollection composed of mutation profiles, gene expression data and cellularbiomarkers from more than 62,000 patients. Its Oncomine platform, a cloud-basedanalytics tool, includes Power Tools for interactive oncology data analysis, aswell as Concepts Edition and Research Edition, web applications for theintegration and unification of "high-throughput cancer profiling data so thattarget expression across a large volume of cancer types, subtypes and experimentscan be assessed online, in seconds." Compendia's offering also includesOncoPredictor Discovery, which "identifies predictive biomarkers based onpreclinical pharmacology," as well as services in translational medicine andtarget identification and validation. The company's OncoScore product allowscustomers to optimize their clinical trials process by the stratification ofpatients based on their genetic signatures.
Life Technologies plans to use Compendia's data collectionand offerings to expand into additional areas of oncology.
"Compendia is highly regarded by its customers as apreeminent source of cancer biology expertise. That expertise will serve as acontent engine to drive development of diagnostic content across the breadth ofLife platforms," Ronnie Andrews, president of Medical Sciences at LifeTechnologies, said in a press release. "Initially, tests like Pervenio Lung RSwill be offered as a service through our CLIA laboratory, but our longer-termgoal is to commercialize diagnostic products on Life platforms for use inhospitals labs, where the majority of patients are treated. All patients shouldhave access to an opportunity to benefit from the extensive knowledge base thathas been gained through decades of research."
Once the transaction is complete, Life Technologies plans todevelop a clinical version of Oncomine that will enable physicians to comparetheir patients' genetic signatures against large data sets in order to identifythe most effective drug protocols. Compendia's oncology workflow will beincorporated into Life Technologies' Ion Reporter software to further developits bioinformatics offering.
"Compendia has become an integral part of thepharmaceutical industry's cancer drug discovery programs, and in joining LifeTechnologies, we'll gain the opportunity to expand the utility of Compendiaeven further," Daniel R. Rhodes, CEO and co-founder of Compendia, said ina press release announcing the deal.
The transaction follows Life Technologies' acquisition ofNavigenics, Inc. in July, which aided the company in expanding its moleculardiagnostics business. Financial details were not disclosed.
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