NEW YORK, July 8 - Incyte Genomics has sold its microarray business to Quark Biotech for an undisclosed fee, the companies said today.
As part of the sale, Quark will relocate the facility to its own Pleasanton, Calif., research center and will keep the management that ran the business for Incyte.
Quark, which is privately held and has more than 300 employees, performs genomic-based drug-discovery in cancer, fibrotic diseases, ischemic diseases, brain disorders, bone and cartilage disorders, and diabetes. to modulate these pathways. The firm said it bought Incyte's assets to beef up its target validation, high-throughput screening, and chemical-screening capabilities.
"We are utilizing microarrays for the functional profiling of proteins by identifying key genes and proteins directly related to the clinical endpoint, and will be using a 'chemical library chip' to find small molecules interacting with those key proteins," Daniel Zurr, Quark's CEO, said in a statement.
Incyte had shut down its commercial microarray production department in November 2001 as part of its effort to streamline operations and focus on drug discovery.