NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Eurofins Scientific announced today it has inked a deal to acquire Diatherix Laboratories for $50 million plus an earn-out upon achievement of certain revenue and profitability targets.
Eurofins will use the acquisition to strengthen its pharmaceutical, genomic testing, and specialty clinical offerings, the firm said in a statement.
Huntsville, Alabama-based Diatherix is an independent CLIA-certified lab serving healthcare providers with proprietary target-enriched multiplex PCR, or TEM-PCR, testing. Diatherix bought the patent for the TEM-PCR technique from Qiagen in 2013, and has developed the method into infectious disease and drug resistance panels that return results in as little as six hours.
Eurofins, a firm specializing in food and pharmaceutical testing, agroscience, and central lab services, recently received Good Laboratory Practice certification for its DNA sequencing services.
In the past few years it has acquired VBC-Biotech's oligonucleotide synthesis and DNA sequencing businesses and established a subsidiary in Austria. It also purchased Lee's Summitt, Missouri-based reference laboratory ViraCor-IBT, gene synthesis firm Entelechon of Regensburg, Germany, and genomics service provider Aros Applied Biotechnology of Aarhus, Denmark.
"Diatherix strengthens Eurofins' growing footprint in the specialty clinical diagnostics market, with truly unique and innovative services with high positive impact for patient care," Gilles Martin, Eurofins' CEO said. "In combination with ViraCor and Boston Heart, Diatherix reinforces [the firm's] position in genetic testing to better serve the global healthcare community."