NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – GenScript Biotech announced today an agreement to acquire CustomArray for an undisclosed sum.
Under the terms of the deal, Piscataway, New Jersey-based GenScript will buy 100 percent of CustomArray's issued shares. It was not immediately clear when the deal would close.
GenScript, a synthetic biology company, specializes in gene, peptide, protein, and antibody synthesis services. The company believes that CustomArray's oligonucleotide synthesis and microarray manufacturing technology and expertise will enable it to better serve its customers.
Patrick Liu, president of GenScript's biosciences business, noted that GenScript has been a client of CustomArray's platform, which relies on semiconductor technology to synthesize oligos in a "highly parallel, high-throughput, high-density, and cost-effective manner."
Liu added that GenScript views CustomArray's technology as "complementary to [its] internal technology platform" and that the deal is "in line with its growth strategy in the area of synthetic biology."
Based in Bothell, Washington, CustomArray was spun out of CombiMatrix when the latter company decided to focus exclusively on its molecular diagnostics business. Led by CEO Brooke Anderson, a former COO at CombiMatrix, CustomArray parlayed its core technology into a variety of offerings, including targeted sequencing, complex DNA and shRNA library construction, as well as CRISPR.
According to Liu, following the acquisition, CustomArray will continue to operate as a wholly-owned subsidiary of GenScript. Anderson said in a statement that the firm viewed the deal as an opportunity to bring its technology to a "much broader range of customers and applications than we could ever reach on our own" including "innovators in the fields of genome editing, biomaterials, agriculture, and more."