Print“Understanding how genetic variation at the molecular level impacts disease is critical in the continued discovery and development of new and more effective therapies, and increasingly in the management of patient care.”
GE Healthcare has bought the contract genomics sequencing company SeqWright for an undisclosed price as part of an ongoing effort to expand its capabilities in the fast-growing molecular diagnostics business.
GE’s purchase of the small, Texas-based sequencing company opens the way for Clarient, the cancer diagnostics company that GE bought for $580 million in 2010, to offer sequencing-based clinical diagnostics services. As the cost of sequencing falls, greater numbers of drug developers are relying on its power to pick out biomarkers that identify the patients in which the new drugs they’re developing will be most effective.
“Understanding how genetic variation at the molecular level impacts disease is critical in the continued discovery and development of new and more effective therapies, and increasingly in the management of patient care through the use of more precise diagnostic tests,” says Pascale Witz, president and CEO of GE Healthcare and Medical Diagnostics. “Combining the expertise and capabilities of the two companies will enable GE Healthcare to offer a substantially wider range of services to the biopharmaceutical, diagnostic and research industries and eventually to patients and health care providers.”
In September 2011, GE said it would dedicate $1 billion of its total R&D budget over the next five years to expand its advanced cancer diagnostic and molecular imaging capabilities, as well as its technologies for the manufacture of biopharmaceuticals and for cancer research, with the goal of playing an ever-growing role in patients’ treatments.
“Sequencing, including next-generation DNA sequencing, is an important technology for GE’s medical diagnostics business,” says Carrie Eglinton-Manner, general manager of Clarient. “The acquisition of a specialized laboratory with long-standing expertise in the sequencing field as well as an established customer base allows us immediate entry into this high-growth space, and is an ideal complement to Clarient’s existing protein and gene expression profiling in support of pharmaceutical and in vitro diagnostic studies.”
April 06, 2012
http://www.burrillreport.com/article-ge_expands_diagnostic_business_with_seqwright_buy.html
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