GE Healthcare will expand its drug discovery offerings in the fast-growing life sciences market with the $1 billion acquisition of three businesses from Thermo Fisher Scientific, the companies announced Monday. GE Healthcare will acquire Thermo Fisher’s HyClone cell culture media and sera, gene modulation and magnetic beads businesses, extending its bioprocessing manufacturing footprint in Asia, the Americas and Europe, GE said. The approximately $1.06 billion purchase will support the development of technologies for research and the manufacture of innovative new medicines, vaccines and diagnostics, the company said. GE Healthcare’s life sciences business currently totals $4 billion and provides products and services for the diagnostics, research and biopharmaceutical manufacturing sectors. “Life Sciences is one of our strongest and fastest-growing business areas, driven by the world’s demand for improved diagnostics and new, safer medicines,” said GE Healthcare president and CEO John Dineen. “This deal makes a good business even better and will help us realize our vision of bringing better health care to more people at lower cost.” Cell culture plays a key role in manufacturing medicines to treat diseases such as cancer and rheumatoid arthritis, as well as a new generation of vaccines. The fact that Thermo Fisher’s HyClone cell culture media and sera products are highly complementary to its established technologies for cell biology research and biopharmaceutical manufacturing will enable the company to offer customers a substantially wider range of technologies and services, GE said. The gene modulation technologies GE Healthcare will acquire are also complementary to its established technologies for drug discovery research, GE said; the Sera-Mag magnetic beads product line will extend GE’s existing technologies in protein analysis and medical diagnostics. “This acquisition is a significant step forward for our customers in biopharmaceutical manufacturing,” said Kieran Murphy, president and CEO of GE Healthcare’s Life Sciences Div. “They will benefit immediately from an expanded range of ‘start-to-finish’ technologies that will help them improve product yields and reduce time-to-market. By expanding our production facilities to three continents, we will be able to offer the biopharmaceutical industry greater confidence in the security of supply of cell culture media and sera, a key part of their production process.” The three businesses generated combined revenue of approximately $250 million in 2013. The acquisition, which is subject to regulatory approval, is expected to close in the first part of 2014. For more information, visit: www.gehealthcare.com