The pace of diagnostic deal making picked up from the end of March through mid-April. Here’s a quick overview of the activity and key deals made during the period.

Mergers & Acquisitions and Asset Sales
The M&A highlight was the announcement of the year’s third nine-figure deal, namely Thermo Fisher Scientific’s $1.7 billion acquisition of Brammer Bio, a leader in viral vector manufacturing for gene and cell therapies. The deal, which is expected to close by the end of the second quarter of 2019, will strengthen Thermo Fisher’s presence in the pharma and biotech markets.

In addition to the other deals listed below, there was news regarding a previously announced acquisition. The UK government’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), a department in charge of promoting competition and reducing anti-competitive activities in the UK, has launched an investigation into Illumina’s planned acquisition of Pacific Biosciences.

This deal, announced last fall and initially scheduled to close mid-year, is valued at approximately $1.2 billion. CMA is considering whether the acquisition will likely result “in a substantial lessening of competition within any market or markets in the United Kingdom for goods or services.” Illumina and PacBio haven’t commented on the CMA investigation.

Strategic Alliances
Among new alliances is a collaboration between Thermo Fisher Scientific and NX Prenatal aimed at developing clinical mass spectrometry-based proteomics tests to monitor fetal health in utero and assess the risk of adverse events like preterm birth and preeclampsia.

There were also two new alliances that involve Google. Genomenon, a genomic search company, is partnering with Google to offer genomic data technology on Google Cloud Platform. Parabricks, a provider of GPU-based bioinformatics software solutions for analyses of next-generation sequencing data, has entered into a similar arrangement to use Google Cloud Platform.

In addition to alliances noted in the chart:

• Qiagen announced that Lab Corp has joined its Day-One lab readiness program, which is designed to expedite the commercial launch of new drugs and in vitro diagnostic tests being developed by Qiagen and its partners once FDA approval is obtained; and
• Primerdesign, the molecular testing division of French diagnostics firm Novacyt, has extended its sepsis assay development contract with Seattle-based Immunexpress.

Here’s a summary of key diagnostic deals from late March through mid April: