NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Cell Biosciences said today that it has acquired sample-prep company Protein Forest in an all-stock transaction worth an undisclosed amount.
In addition, Cell Biosciences said that in connection with the acquisition, it has raised an additional $4 million in equity financing, led by Novo A/S.
The acquisition adds Protein Forest's digital ProteomeChip product, including instrumentation, software, reagents, and consumables, to Santa Clara, Calif.-based Cell Biosciences' portfolio of protein-analysis products.
Founded in 2002, Protein Forest, based in Lexington, Mass., developed ProteomeChip to rapidly and reproducibly fractionate proteins in complex biological samples as a prerequisite for quantitative proteomics measurements.
The technology can also be used as a sample preparation front end for other protein-analysis techniques, including Western blot analysis, mass spectrometry, and Cell Biosciences' nanoproteomic platforms.
"The lack of reproducible sample preparation has become a serious problem for proteomics researchers," Cell Biosciences President and CEO Tim Harkness said in a statement. "We believe that the digital ProteomeChip products represent a powerful solution for this market need."
In October, Cell Biosciences acquired Alpha Innotech for approximately $17.9 million. The deal, first announced in September, was intended to integrate Alpha Innotech's digital imaging systems with Cell Biosciences' CB1000 system, a nanofluidic immunoassay platform for detecting and characterizing oncoproteins and other signaling proteins in ultra-small biological samples.