Health sciences company PerkinElmer Inc. announced today it will acquire Euroscreen SA’s majority owned subsidiary, Euroscreen Products SA, for an undisclosed amount of cash. Based in Gosselies, Belgium, Euroscreen Products is a provider of G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) membranes, cell lines, and the AequoScreen aequorin-based cellular assay platform used in pharmaceutical and biotech drug discovery laboratories. The deal is expected to close in the first quarter of 2007. “This transaction would represent the next step in our strategy to build the most comprehensive offering in cellular screening and drug discovery reagent technologies,” said Gregory L. Summe, PerkinElmer chairman and CEO. “The AequoScreen platform would give PerkinElmer the ability to meet the growing demands of our pharmaceutical and biotechnology customers with a complete GPCR screening solution that improves performance and reduces workflow costs, while dramatically increasing lab productivity.” Under the terms of the agreement, Euroscreen Products would transfer its portfolio of GPCR screening tools and its exclusive global license to aequorin technology, granted by the University of Georgia Research Foundation Inc., to PerkinElmer. Aequorin technology, based on a naturally occurring photoprotein, generates large, luminescent signals that result in higher quality data, while reducing the number of false positives in high throughput and ultrahigh throughput screening environments. PerkinElmer said the technology can be used with its instrumentation and assay kits to identify and classify cellular receptors needed for drug discovery. PerkinElmer said its current GPCR portfolio contains assay tool kits which could potentially identify cellular targets in gastrointestinal and neurological disorders, including hypertension."The sale of our products division would enable us to reinforce our strategy dramatically by funding our drug discovery and tailored screening service activities," said Jean Combalbert, CEO of Euroscreen SA. This would be PerkinElmer's second recent acquisition related to GPCR and kinase assay development. On Dec. 1, the company announced it was buying Evotec Technologies GmbH, which provides high content screening technologies to pharmaceutical and biotechnology drug discovery labs, for $30 million. The addition of both companies will strengthen PerkinElmer's position in the drug discovery and cellular screening markets, the company said. For more information, visit: www.perkinelmer.com