Agilent Makes Third Acquisition This Year
The acquisition indicates Agilent’s continuing focus on sample preparation and its investment in MS. The acquisition provides Agilent with BIOCIUS’s rapid inlet technology for MS for improved productivity. The RapidFire system enables automated purification via a solid phase extraction cassette and label-free MS analysis from microwell plates (see IBO 11/15/09, 5/31/10). The company partnered with Agilent last year to introduce a system for high-throughput screening of in vitro ADME analysis incorporating Agilent’s TOF MS system.
Santa Clara, CA 3/1/11—Agilent Technologies has acquired BIOCIUS Life Sciences, the developer of the RapidFire high-throughput MS drug screening platform, for an undisclosed amount. “BIOCIUS’s unique RapidFire technology gives customers an unsurpassed ability to increase the effectiveness and reduce the cost of drug discovery and compound identification,” stated Gustavo Salem, vice president of Agilent’s Biological Systems Division, part of the company’s Life Sciences Group. “With this technology and the team that developed it now part of Agilent, we can expand our reach in the pharmaceutical and clinical mass spec markets.” BIOCIUS’s 25 employees will join Agilent.
