Gen-Probe makes $50 million strategic investment in Pacific Biosciences

Gen-Probe says it has made a $50 million strategic investment in fellow USA-based Pacific Biosciences, a private sequencing company. In addition, the companies will work together to explore co-development of new integrated clinical diagnostics systems based on Pacific Biosciences' Single Molecule Real Time (SMRT) platform and Gen-Probe's expertise in diagnostics.

The two companies will initially collaborate on an exclusive basis for up to 30 months, with the goal of developing a longer-term, preferred business relationship aimed toward improving the diagnosis of human diseases. The companies can also purchase certain of each others' products on preferential terms.

"We believe Pacific Biosciences' third-generation, single-molecule sequencing technology has the potential to play an important long-term role in strategically valuable, high-growth clinical diagnostics markets such as oncology, transplant diagnostics and pharmacogenomics due to its fast time to result, long read lengths, and ability to interrogate broad genomic regions in high resolution," said Carl Hull, Gen-Probe's president and chief executive. "We are excited to collaborate with Pacific Biosciences to develop an innovative sequencing system based on their best-in-class technologies."