Santa Clara, CA 1/8/18—Agilent Technologies has acquired Luxcel Biosciences for an undisclosed amount. Ireland-based Luxcel Biosciences develops real-time fluorescense plate reader–based in vitro cell assay kits. Luxcel will remain located in Ireland, and become a sensor chemistries and bioassay solutions group within Agilent’s Cell Analysis Division. The Division includes the Seahorse Bioscience business. “Luxcel is highly complementary to our Seahorse offerings,” said Todd Christian, general manager of Agilent’s Cell Analysis Division. “With this acquisition, we further extend our leadership in live-cell, kinetic assays, accelerating our expansion into pharmaceutical and biopharma discovery, and in vitro toxicology screening applications.” Luxcel Biosciences’ kits address cell metabolism, drug safety and toxicity, and hypoxia and oxidative stress.

As with Agilent’s Seahorse Bioscience offerings, Luxcel Biosciences’ solutions are used to study mitochondrial function, cellular metabolism and hypoxia oxidative stress but without a dedicated system.

As Mr. Christian told IBO, “Luxcel’s portfolio is a natural extension of the Seahorse offerings, providing a wider range of solutions. For example, Luxcel provides solutions for in vitro, predictive toxicity screening complementing Agilent’s Seahorse downstream solutions for mechanism of action and off-target liabilities.” The purchase also adds new assay-development capabilities. “In addition, the acquisition of Luxcel brings world-class biosensor chemistries, further extending the collective range of bioassay solutions.” 

Asked how Agilent plans to grow the use of Luxcel’s technology, Mr. Christian said, “We believe one of the key growth drivers in the cell analysis space is the ability to analyze cells, their function and interactions, in real time, over time and in a nondestructive way. Luxcel’s unique biosensor technology and assay development expertise together with Agilent’s commercial scale and innovative platform capabilities will better enable us to drive adoption of a portfolio of advanced solutions for pharma/biopharma discovery and in vitro toxicology screening applications.”

This growth is part of Agilent’s strategy for the cell biology market. “Luxcel’s proprietary biosensor chemistries will expand and diversify Agilent’s ‘intelligent’ plasticware that combines cell culture and proprietary label-free detection,” noted Mr. Christian. “We see the acquisition as the next step towards Agilent’s goal of developing a complete set of solutions targeted at the growing cell analysis market.”