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

The pattern of high volume and relatively low impact continued with strategic alliances outnumbering acquisitions at rate of roughly 3:1.

M&A
Following the trio of mega-deal closings, Abbott/Alere, ThermoFisher/Patheon and LabCorp/Chiltern, mid-October to November was a bit of an anti-climax in the M&A realm. Most of the action featured the closing of previous deals rather than the initiation of new ones. Quest was the most active player acquiring Cleveland HeartLab from the Cleveland Clinic and a Los Angeles area lab network from the California Laboratory Association. Other notable deals included closings of acquisitions announced in July:

• Siemens Healthineers' acquisition of Epocal from Abbott as part of its sell-off to clear way for the Alere merger;

• Konica Minolta's intriguing purchase of California genetics testing firm Ambry Genetics for $1 billion; and

• Invitae's $35 million acquisition of CombiMatrix, which paired with the recent acquisition of Good Start Genetics, positions Invitae to add reproductive health testing to product line and become comprehensive genomic information company.

Strategic Alliances
Skyline Medical was among the most active firms on the alliance front announcing a pair of joint ventures enabling it to expand its contract research organization services, including deals gaining access to Helomics' D-Chip platform to create new approaches for personalized cancer diagnosis and care and CytoBiosciences' personalized research services.

LabCorp also announced multiple deals including a partnership allowing its Covance Drug Development business to leverage MC10's wearable sensor technology for clinical trials and patient testing and monitoring and giving LabCorp an equity stake in the tech firm. Some of the other noteworthy alliances from the period include:

• The collaboration between Roche Diagnostics and Inotrem to develop a companion diagnostic test for septic shock treatment for clinical trials to run on Roche's Elecsys immunochemistry platform;

• Myriad Genetics' collaboration with CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield on an 18-month study to evaluate the effectiveness of the Vectra DA test for detecting and treating rheumatoid arthritis; and

• The new China joint venture between Sciex and Hangzhou-based Zhejiang Dian Diagnostics Objective: aimed at commercializing Class I, II and III reagents for the SCIEX Triple Quad 4500MD LC-MS/MS system.

Here's a graphic summary of the key diagnostic deals from mid-October through November: