INDUSTRY NEWS
Serologicals Corp. (Atlanta) has been actively involved in the acquisitions market lately. During a recent 10-day span, the company announced two separate acquisitions—Cytomyx Ltd. (Cambridge, UK) and Linco (St. Louis). According to Serologicals officials, these acquisitions will serve two very different purposes in the company’s overall strategic growth plans.
“We’re always looking at ways to enhance our portfolios and how we can more strongly, more quickly, and more sustainably develop customers and our position in the marketplace,” says David A. Dodd, president and chief executive officer at Serologicals. “The Cytomyx deal fits into a business segment strategy in drug discovery, and the Linco deal fits into a business strategy around our multiplexing platform.”
Serologicals announced an agreement to acquire Cytomyx, a provider of ion channel cell lines and drug discovery services. This acquisition will enable Serologicals not only to provide kinase screening services to pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, but also to test compounds for human ERG liabilities and activity against other ion channels associated with cardiac safety.
“The third-largest area in drug targeting is ion channels. So by acquiring Cytomyx, we’re now covering almost three-fourths of all the areas that pharmaceutical and biotech companies are focused on to identify new drug targets,” says Dodd. “Our model is not just to provide the products, meaning the specific kinases, the G protein coupled receptor (GPCR) cell lines, or the ion channel cell lines, but also the services working in conjunction with our customers so that they outsource that entire activity.”
Serologicals followed by announcing an agreement to acquire Linco, a privately owned life sciences company focused on supplying research assays and test kits for the Luminex-based multiplexing platform and other immunoassays. Linco consists of two companies: Linco Research Inc. is a life sciences provider of multiplex, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), and radioimmunoassay (RIA) products and technologies, while Linco Diagnostic Services Inc. provides bioanalytical contract services supporting research and new pharmaceutical drug development.
“By combining Linco’s Luminex-based business along with what we have in our Upstate Group subsidiary, we will have the largest market share in providing assays and products on the multiplexing platform from Luminex,” says Dodd. “So that was done for a reason of consolidated leadership position. Linco also has the capability to become a real center of excellence in kit development and production. They do that exceedingly well, and they do it in a very efficient and quick time frame.”
In making these acquisitions, Serologicals targeted certain areas in the IVD industry that could have growth potential. One area in particular that the company is interested in pursuing and developing is biomarkers.
“Both Linco and our existing Chemicon International and Upstate subsidiaries have products that have been used and are used as biomarkers,” says Dodd. “There’s a lot of complementary nature when you’re looking at the business and thinking of the development of more formal biomarkers. We believe that we can consolidate now with Linco our expertise in that and more formally pursue the development of biomarker opportunities.”
One such biomarker development opportunity is personalized medicine. Dodd believes there are potential synergies and linkages among the resources at Cytomyx, Linco, and the current Serologicials subsidiaries that will allow them to be well positioned to develop technologies for personalized medicine.
“We used to think of diagnostics as only for clinical monitoring or identification,” says Dodd. “But now the opportunity has come to be able to have diagnostics products support biomarkers, an area that is felt to hold great promise and opportunities for fine-tuning and targeting particular therapeutics to patients who will respond appropriately, and identifying which patients probably would not respond as one might intend. It’s perceived to be a big opportunity, and I believe in that. It’s at an infancy in terms of a developed market, but at a real competitive stage of people trying to get activity going.”
