Hologic pays $795M for developer of molecular diagnostic tests and instrumentation
Hologic, a women's health company, has agreed to acquire Mobidiag Oy, a privately held, commercial-stage Finnish-French developer of innovative molecular diagnostic tests and instrumentation, for approximately $795 million.
“Acquiring Mobidiag will further strengthen our international and diagnostics businesses by enabling us to expand into the large, fast-growing acute care adjacency with a near-patient testing solution that offers ease of use, multiplex capability and rapid turnaround time,” said Jan Verstreken, group president, international at Hologic. “We believe that Mobidiag has developed a differentiated platform that addresses many of the historical challenges of multiplexed point-of-care molecular testing.”
Tuomas Tenkanen, Mobidiag’s chief executive officer, said: “Hologic’s commercial expertise and scale will drive broader market adoption of our products, and their established US regulatory and market development capabilities will accelerate the introduction of our products and maximize their potential in the US.”
Mobidiag develops and markets PCR (polymerase chain reaction)-based tests for acute care conditions such as gastrointestinal and respiratory infections, antimicrobial resistance management, and healthcare associated infections. The Amplidiag and Novodiag platforms are automated instruments that deliver rapid turnaround times ranging from 50 minutes to 2 hours.
The Novodiag platform combines real-time PCR and microarray capabilities to provide high-level multiplexing. Multiplexing enables multiple pathogens to be identified in a single sample, streamlining workflows for laboratories and providing rapid results to physicians. For example, gastrointestinal infections commonly present with similar or identical symptoms but can be caused by more than 25 organisms. Highly multiplexed assays allow clinicians to identify which organism is responsible for an infection quickly, accurately and efficiently.
“One of our key goals is to use our strong cash flow to create a larger, faster growing company for a post-pandemic world,” said Steve MacMillan, Hologic’s chairman, president and chief executive officer. “Mobidiag provides an exceptional new growth platform, which will generate long-term value by enabling us to enter the acute care market, which is expected to roughly double in the next five years, with a differentiated, highly competitive solution.”
Mobidiag generated approximately $42 million (€35 million) of revenue in calendar 2020. Hologic intends to invest in assay development to drive growth of the Novodiag platform.