Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: A) today announced that it has completed the acquisition of Lasergen, Inc. (Lasergen), an emerging biotechnology company focused on research and development of innovative technologies for DNA sequencing.
In March 2016 Agilent made an initial investment in the Houston, Texas based privately-held company to acquire a 48-percent ownership stake with a two-year call option to acquire the remaining shares for $105 million. Agilent gave its notice of exercise on February 23, 2018.
"We are pleased to complete our acquisition of Lasergen," said Sam Raha, president of Agilent's Diagnostics and Genomics Group. "We are excited to welcome our Lasergen colleagues to the Agilent family, and look forward to continuing our work as one team focused on building a next-generation sequencing workflow for clinical applications."
Since Agilent's initial investment, Lasergen and Agilent have been collaborating to develop a workflow solution for clinical applications based on next-generation sequencing leveraging Lasergen's Lightning Terminators™ chemistry.
"In 2016 we began our collaboration with Lasergen that reinforced our confidence in the team and technology," said Kamni Vijay, vice president and general manager of Agilent's Genomics division. "As a unified team, we now have new opportunities to leverage our combined strengths and create significant value for our customers as we work towards our goal of creating an integrated clinical workflow solution and providing more labs with access to molecular diagnostics."