NEW YORK, Jan. 6 (GenomeWeb News) - BioMerieux of Marcy-l'Etoile, France, plans to develop molecular diagnostics systems using Cepheid's platform technologies, Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Cepheid said today.
The testing units will combine BioMerieux's NASBA (Nucleic Acid Sequence-Based Amplification) technology and Cepheid's Smart Cycler and GeneXpert platforms.
BioMerieux will pay Cepheid a total of $15 million in upfront and milestone payments, including a $2 million option payment received in October 2003. Cepheid will also receive payments from product purchases and royalties.