NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Intuitive Biosciences today announced an agreement to purchase the animal health and research tools assets and businesses of Gentel Biosciences for an undisclosed amount.
The deal is expected to close during the second quarter.
Gentel has been out of business since March 1, according to its website.
Intuitive is based in Madison, Wis., and as part of the acquisition it bought "all of [Gentel's] intellectual property … and substantially all of [its] assets," as well as licensing agreements that Gentel had, Shawn Guse, President and CEO of Intuitive told GenomeWeb Daily News.
Intuitive also is offering its own proprietary content and finishing development work on three proprietary tests for non-human health primate health. Two are pathogen-free panels, and one is a tuberculosis test that will appear on the first two panels, as well as a stand-alone test.
The TB panel, Guse said, will also be adapted to other animal species.
In addition to its assays, Intuitive is working on "systematizing our biomarker development platform," and is talking with potential partners about using their high-throughput screening and bioinformatics platform, he said. Guse declined further comment.
As part of the purchase, Intuitive retained Gentel's scientific staff and now has six employees.
Guse's background is as a securities lawyer and he previously was general counsel at TomoTherapy. He eventually became its vice president of international operations, then became CEO of its spinout firm called Compact Particle Acceleration.
Gentel, which also had been based in Madison, was primarily a protein microarray firm and was spun out of the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 2000. Former officials from the firm declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment.