NEW YORK – Qiagen said after the close of the market on Thursday that it has acquired the remaining approximately 80 percent of diagnostics developer NeuMoDx Molecular that it did not already own for $248 million in cash.
Qiagen said it completed the transaction after receiving US regulatory clearance for the full acquisition. In 2018, Qiagen had purchased a 19.9 percent stake in Ann Arbor, Michigan-based NeuMoDx along with the right to acquire the remaining shares at a price of $234 million. The final payment price of $248 million includes customary purchase price adjustments for cash, indebtedness, and transaction costs.
As stipulated in the 2018 agreement, Qiagen has also been distributing the high-throughput NeuMoDx 288 and medium-throughput NeuMoDx 96 diagnostic testing platforms in Europe and other markets outside the US.
The NeuMoDx 288 and 96 systems combine patented extraction technologies, microfluidics, and silicon-based thermal cycling for fully automated, sample-to-answer, random-access molecular testing. Each system can process both commercial assays and laboratory-developed tests.
The test menus for both NeuMoDx platforms already include 13 CE-IVD-marked assays for different infectious diseases. These include a dedicated COVID-19 test, which has also received US Food and Drug Administration Emergency Use Authorization in the US. NeuMoDx has also received FDA clearance for a group B Streptococcus test on the platforms.
A new multiplex test for influenza, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), and SARS-CoV-2 is scheduled for launch in the fourth quarter of 2020, Qiagen said. This assay would complement a Qiagen respiratory panel that runs on its QiaStat-Dx syndromic testing system, includes these targets alongside more than a dozen others, and received CE marking and FDA EUA earlier this year.
Last month, Thermo Fisher Scientific's planned acquisition of Qiagen was scuttled as only approximately 47 percent of Qiagen's shareholders tendered their shares.