NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) — Becton Dickinson said today that it has acquired Irish sample prep automation firm GenCell Biosystems.
BD said it is not disclosing financial details of the acquisition at this time but plans to update its guidance to reflect the impact of the deal during its fourth quarter earnings call.
For BD, the deal marks the company's entry into the next-generation sequencing market. "The acquisition gives BD access to the NGS market with a differentiated platform that will provide a base to further grow our genomics offerings," BD Group President Linda Tharby said in a statement.
GenCell has developed a proprietary microdroplet reaction technology called Composite Liquid Cell (CLC). One of its first applications is an automated library preparation platform for next-generation sequencing, called CLiC LP, that promises lower running costs than other methods. GenCell was planning to start shipping the instrument this summer.
The company was also planning to apply the CLC technology to clinical diagnostics and genotyping.
"We believe we will now be able to scale up and introduce further transformative innovation in NGS-related segments," GenCell Founder and CEO Kieran Curran said in a statement.
Privately funded GenCell was founded in 2011 and is based in Limerick, with a marketing, sales, and service group in Madison, Wis. In 2012, the firm raised €2.7 million ($3.4 million) from private investors and Enterprise Ireland, which provides government funding.