Diagnostic Deals: A Roundup of the Key Mergers, Acquisitions, Alliances, Licenses and Other Strategic Transactions From the Past Month

While M&A activity in the wider healthcare industry is heating up deal making in the diagnostics space remains relatively light, not so much in terms of volume but in size, at least compared to the same period in 2017. Still, the diagnostic industry remains strategically active, particularly in forging new alliances and collaborations. Here is an overview of what happened from late March to mid-April.

M&A
The biggest deal of the period, and for all of 2018 so far, was the closing of Roche’s $1.9 billion acquisition of Flatiron Health. The oncology EHR software developer will continue to operate as a separate entity under its current business model while retaining its network of community cancer clinics, academic research centers and therapeutic oncology companies. Also closing was BioMérieux’s acquisition of protein biomarker developer Astute Medical for $90 million in cash.

On April 17, Hong Kong-based Prenetics made a move into consumer genomics by acquiring UK firm DNAFit for $10 million, which will continue to maintain its own brand and London HQ.

Meanwhile, Amarantus Bioscience announced that it has reacquired the rights to three neurology tests from Avant Diagnostics, including MSPrecise, NuroPro and LymPro Test. Under the deal, Amarantus will cancel $722,000 of liabilities owed by Avant and issue it 1 million shares of its common stock. In return, Avant will issue an additional 32 million shares of its common stock to Amarantus to repay the debt.

Strategic Alliances
Key alliances during the period paired leading diagnostic providers with major pharmaceuticals and biopharm companies, including:

• A pair of deals involving Illumina, one with Bristol-Myers Squibb aimed at developing new companion diagnostics tests for use with drugs in the BMS pipeline, and another with Loxo Oncology for creating sequencing-based pan-cancer diagnostics for Loxo’s targeted oncology drugs;

• PATH and Mologic’s collaboration to develop and commercialize a rapid diagnostic test for treating Plasmodium vivax malaria; and

• Personal Genome Diagnostics’s agreement to work with Five Prime Therapeutics to develop a blood-based companion assay for use with the bemarituzumab investigation drug.

Quest Diagnostics was involved in what may have been the most notable deal of the period, at least in terms of the size of the participants, by joining a new alliance with Humana, UnitedHealthcare, Multiplan et al. launching a pilot program aimed at using blockchain technology to promote data sharing leading to, hopefully, watershed improvements in data quality and cost savings across the wider healthcare industry.