Diagnostic Deals: A Roundup of January’s Mergers, Acquisitions, Alliances, Licenses and Other Major Transactions

January 2017 has already seen an unusually high volume of diagnostic deal making. Here is a quick overview of the key deals and what they portend.

M&A
While Abbott Laboratories made the biggest deal by completing its $25 billion purchase of St. Jude Medical, Bio-Rad Laboratories may have been the month's most active company. On Jan. 9, Bio-Rad unveiled the new next-generation sequencing (NGS) tool it developed in collaboration with Illumina. A first of its kind, the Illumina Bio-Rad Single-Cell Sequencing Solution enables researchers to study how single cells affect tissue function, disease and therapeutic response.

Less than a week later, Bio-Rad announced that it had reached agreement to acquire droplet-based PCR systems manufacturer RainDance Technologies for an undisclosed amount. The purchase, which is expected to close in the first quarter, dramatically expands Bio-Rad's capacity to research liquid biopsy via absorption of RainDance's systems for partitioning samples into one million droplets. The solutions "will extend our reach into next-generation sequencing applications and strengthen our position in the area of Droplet Digital PCR," noted Bio-Rad CEO Norman Schwartz in a statement. But Bio-Rad's busy month took an unwelcome turn a few days later when the US Patent and Trademark Office's Patent Trial and Appeal Board handed down a ruling in RainDance's ongoing patent dispute with 10x Genomics that invalidates a number of the former's droplet size manipulation systems patent claims. It is unclear how the ruling will affect Bio-Rad's acquisition of RainDance.

LabCorp, PerkinElmer and QIAGEN were among the major diagnostics companies to announce new acquisition deals during the month. Meanwhile, M&A deals to close during the month included Invitae's purchase of patient-provider data connectivity platform AltaVoice, and Bruker's acquisitions of two companies in Germany, including—SCiLS, an informatics firm known for its MALDI imaging products, and InVivo, a biotech firm specializing in antibody and immunoassay development.

Strategic Alliances
It was also a very busy month for Illumina, which, in addition to launching the Illumina Bio-Rad Single-Cell Sequencing Solution product described above, unveiled a pair of important new strategic deals on Jan. 9: a partnership to integrate its BaseSpace® Sequence Hub with IBM's Watson for Genomics; and a collaboration to integrate its genetic variation analysis sequencing systems with Royal Philllips's IntelliSpace Genomics informatics platform.

In fact, pooling of data integration and analysis technology was the principle theme behind many of the month's key strategic alliances, including deals combining:

• 10x Genomics Chromium system with PerkinElmer's automated technologies to create jointly offered NGS solutions;

• Edico Genome's Dragen bioinformatics processor with Dell EMC's IU Dell 4130 server for genome analysis to develop bundled NGS computing and storage solutions; and

• LifeNome's bioinformatics platform with testing products developed by Imagene Labs to expand the existing partnership's range of "wellness genomics" products.

Meanwhile, less than a month after acquiring Belgian genomics firm Multiplicom, Agilent Technologies teamed with Centre for Human Genetics of the University of Leuven and University Hospital of Leuven for joint research of reimplantation genetic testing with an eye to developing systems enabling labs to use single sequencing workflow for preimplantation genetic analysis for single gene disorders and translocation carriers. Here is a run down on recent deals of note:

Takeaway: The turn of the calendar year has brought a significant number of diagnostic deals.