CELLINK Acquires Nanoscribe, Visikol
The CELLINK Group, a bioconvergence company focused on the application areas of bioprinting, multiomics, cell line development, and diagnostics, strengthened its position in the biophotonics space with a pair of acquisitions totaling up to $78 million. The company acquired Nanoscribe, a spinout from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology that is developing two-photon polymerization tools, and Visikol, a contract research services company that offers 3D cell culture, 3D tissue imaging, multiplex imaging, and digital pathology services to pharma and biotech companies.
CELLINK will acquire all outstanding shares of Nanoscribe in a two-phase cash and stock agreement. The initial purchase price will be £34 million ($48.01 million) followed by a €16 million ($22.6 million) payment in earn-outs.
The two-photon polymerization additive manufacturing technology enables bioprinting of vascular microenvironments at the subcellular scale, suitable for cell studies and lab-on-a-chip applications, which is expected to contribute to CELLINK’s product development. The addition, the company said in a press release, will deliver additional revenue through the fabrication of implants, microneedles, microporous membranes, and consumables for omics applications.
“The life science industry is currently going through a very exciting transformation where many processes and technologies are being miniaturized to increase throughput and reduce cost, where price of reagents is a major bottleneck for sequencing,” both companies said in the shared portion of separate releases. “One example is the sample preparation steps for single-cell genomics applications. With Nanoscribe’s microfabrication technologies, the CELLINK Group stays competitive in this transformation and aims to miniaturize devices for a wide range of applications, resulting in internal capabilities to further expand its consumables offering across all business areas.”
Nanoscribe is expected to generate €15.4 million ($21.74 million) in revenue in 2021.
CELLINK followed up its purchase of Nanoscribe with its acquisition of Visikol for $7.5 million. The group anticipates the ability to offer additional elements in the drug discovery process by combining the Visikol HISTO tissue clearing reagents with cloud-based technology for analysis, advanced imaging with digital pathology, and 3D cell culture assays. The acquisition provides CELLINK with a new market segment in the contract research market, CELLINK stated in a press release. Visikol will be part of the group’s bioprinting business area. It is expected to generate $3 million of revenue in 2021.
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