NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – CooperSurgical is exiting its genetic carrier screening and noninvasive prenatal testing business, the firm said in a regulatory filing on Friday.
CooperGenomics, a unit of CooperSurgical, itself part of the Cooper Companies, had been offering a carrier screening test called CarrierMap, which tested for more than 300 genetic conditions, as well as an NIPT called ChromoMap, which tested for fetal trisomies 21, 18, and 13 and, optionally, a number of sex chromosome aneuploidies and microdeletions.
The carrier screening test originally came from Recombine, the assets of which CooperSurgical acquired in 2016 for approximately $85 million. According to the form 10-Q filed on Friday with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, CooperSurgical in the second quarter of fiscal 2018 recognized an impairment charge of $24.4 million on the intangible assets it acquired from Recombine, "as the cash flow expected to be generated by this asset group over its estimated remaining life were not sufficient to recover its carrying value."
As a result of the discontinuation of carrier screening and NIPT testing, Cooper expects to incur exit and restructuring charges of $10 million to $15 million, mostly for compensation and benefits for terminated employees. The company expects that most of the restructuring will be completed by the end of fiscal year 2018. It noted that the contribution of net loss from the two product lines are not material to its results.
CooperGenomics is the result of the combination of several reproductive health-related genetic testing businesses the company acquired over the past few years: Reprogenetics in 2014, and Genesis Genetics and Recombine in 2016. The unit continues to offer PGD (preimplantation genetic diagnosis), PGS (preimplantation genetic screening), and product-of-conception testing for miscarriages, according to its website.