NEW YORK – Danaher said this week that it has completed its $9.6 billion acquisition of Aldevron, which will operate as a standalone company under Danaher’s life sciences segment. Danaher announced the acquisition in June and said on a conference call in July that it expects the company to generate $500 million in revenues in 2022. Fargo, North Dakota-based Aldevron manufactures plasmid DNA, mRNA, and proteins for biotechnology and pharmaceutical customers in research, clinical, and commercial applications.
SeqLL said this week that it has closed its previously announced initial public offering of 3,060,000 shares of its common stock and warrants to purchase up to another 3,060,000 shares of common stock. Each share was sold with one warrant at an exercise price of $4.25 per share for gross proceeds of about $13 million. Maxim Group, which acted as the sole bookrunning manager for the offering, has exercised its option to purchase an additional 459,000 warrants. Shares and warrants of SeqLL began trading on the Nasdaq on Aug. 27 under the ticker symbols SQL and SQLLW, respectively. The company plans to use the net proceeds from the offering to expand its commercial operations in order to support life sciences research and applications development. Its plans include building additional sequencing instruments, manufacturing reagents, and consumables and developing proprietary reagents for areas outside of life sciences.
Yourgene Health said this week that it has received ISO 15189:2012 accreditation for its COVID-19 testing and sequencing services, following assessments by the UK accreditation service. The company said this accreditation provides assurance that its Citylabs 1.0 laboratory in Manchester meets internationally recognized standards of performance and competence.
Thermo Fisher Scientific said this week that it has been awarded a $192.5 million contract from the US Department of Defense to ensure reliable domestic production of pipette tips for use in research and diagnostic labs. Using this award, the company said it will co-invest with the US government in building a new, state-of-the-art, energy-efficient manufacturing facility for pipette tips in North Carolina. Construction will be fully completed by Q3 2024, with pipette tip manufacturing starting as early as Q3 2023.
CRISPR therapeutics developer Caribou Biosciences said this week that it has completed its upsized IPO on the Nasdaq, raising approximately $349.6 million in gross proceeds. In July Caribou said it had completed its IPO, selling 19 million shares of its common stock at a price to the public of $16.00 per share, for gross proceeds of $304.0 million. In August, the underwriters fully exercised their option to purchase an additional 2.85 million shares of common stock at the IPO price, increasing the total number of shares sold by Caribou to 21.85 million and the aggregate gross proceeds to $349.6 million. Net proceeds from the IPO, after deducting underwriting discounts and commissions and other offering expenses payable by Caribou, were $321.0 million.
The newly public company also this week reported an 82 percent drop in second quarter revenues on lower license and collaboration revenues. For the three-month period ended June 30, Caribou's revenues fell to $1.5 million from $8.5 million the year before. Caribou attributed the decline to $7.5 million in stock it received in the second quarter 2020 for an exclusive license to its technology granted to an undisclosed private company. Caribou's Q2 net loss jumped to $14.3 million, or $1.39 per share, from $1.9 million, or $.22 per share, a year earlier. At the end of June, Caribou had cash and cash equivalents totaling $129.5 million.
AnPac Bio-Medical Science said this week that its clinical laboratory in Philadelphia has received accreditation from the College of American Pathologists. The company has operations in the US and in China.
In Brief This Week is a selection of news items that may be of interest to our readers but had not previously appeared on GenomeWeb.