This post has been updated to correct Clarient's 2009 revenue. It was $91 million, not $23 million, as originally reported.

By Kirell Lakhman

GE Healthcare this morning said it plans to acquire clinical cancer-testing company Clarient for around $580 million in an effort to expand GE's footprint in the molecular cancer-testing and pharmacogenetic-testing markets.

The acquisition, which is expected to close later this year or in early 2011, could also move GE Healthcare one step closer to its goal of integrating imaging — its specialty — and clinical molecular diagnostics into a one-two punch for diagnosing and monitoring diseases, particularly cancer.

The fusion of molecular testing and imaging has been considered a Holy Grail in diagnostics for years. Though GE Healthcare has tried this strategy before, originally by acquiring British biotech Amersham in 2004, it has not been able to make this technological marriage work.

But having Clarient onboard could take GE Healthcare closer than ever to reaching this goal. Whereas Amersham had principally its CodeLink family of microarrays defining its MDx play, Clarient has a robust menu of IHC, flow cytometry, real-time PCR, FISH, ISH, cytogenetic, karyotyping, immunofluorescence, and microarray-based tests, primarily for breast, prostate, lung, colon, and blood cancers, that could be a powerful addition to GE Healthcare.

In a statement, GE Healthcare hinted as much, saying it expects Clarient "to accelerate the development of new integrated tools for the diagnosis and characterization of cancer" and "help pathologists and oncologists make more confident clinical decisions."

GE Healthcare CEO John Dineen said the buy "will accelerate our expansion into cancer diagnostics and therapy-selection tools," adding that "we believe we can build a $1-billion-plus business by developing integrated diagnostic solutions for cancer and other diseases."

Clarient, based in Alisa Viejo, Calif., generated $91 million in revenue in 2009 and its top line has grown 68 percent since 2005, compounded annually. By comparison, GE Healthcare, a unit of General Electric, generated more than $16 billion in revenue in 2009.

With this top line in mind, Clarient CEO Ron Andrews added that the acquisition will give his company "access to the resources we need to accelerate our development plans."

As I reported in June, Clarient was named a preferred provider for a new pharmacogenetic-testing network that is being built by CVS Caremark, the largest pharmacy in the US.

More recently, the lab received US and European patents for its Mammostrat breast cancer-recurrence test, which it plans to release in the US as an LDT later this year.

And last year the company acquired Applied Genomics for its EGFR-based assay for non small-cell lung cancer. The five-antibody immunohistochemistry test, called Pulmotype, is designed to distinguish between adenocarcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma in non-small cell lung cancer.

As my colleague Turna Ray wrote at the time, Clarient had planned to begin offering the test by the first quarter of 2010, after completing additional validation. The test will be primarily marketed to Clarient's network of 1,100 pathology practices.

The deal is GE Healthcare' latest effort to gain a wider footprint in the molecular diagnostics space. In 2004 it paid nearly $10 billion — the largest life-science acquisition at the time — to acquire Amersham.

Though GE Healthcare divested the CodeLink assets three years later, it went on to make other MDx investments, including buying a $5 million stake in May in CardioDx, which is developing a gene expression-based test designed to determine the likelihood that a patient has obstructive coronary artery disease.

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