NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – BioMérieux has acquired privately held software company Applied Maths for an undisclosed amount to strengthen its bioinformatics know-how and improve its ability to analyze and interpret biological data.
BioMérieux provides diagnostic solutions that are focused on improving clinical knowledge about disease-causing microorganisms. Last month, the firm partnered with Illumina to launch a service called EpiSeq for sequencing the genomes of Staphylococcus aureus samples. It plans to use Applied Maths' solutions to enrich and expand this particular service.
The company will also seek additional opportunities for Applied Maths' software in the clinical and industrial microbiology domains, BioMérieux said, with a focus on optimizing BioMérieux's data management capabilities and the company's collection of clinically relevant bacterial strains as well as on consolidating data from the different instruments in the company's portfolio, among other goals.
"The acquisition of Applied Maths ... will help answer the most recent expectations of our customers, facing a growing digitalization of the laboratory environment and requiring more insights to make more informed clinical decisions for better patient care," Jean-Luc Belingard, BioMérieux's chairman, said in a statement.
Founded in 1992, Applied Maths developed and markets the BioNumerics software suite for managing and analyzing different types of data including genome sequences and maps and molecular PCR information in the context of microbiology applications. The company's software is used by companies such as Bayer CropScience. In 2013, the company signed an agreement to integrate technologies with PathoGenetix into a solution for rapid pathogen strain typing. It also signed a pact with OpGen to build software for microbial genomics and molecular strain typing that same year.
Financial and other terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.