- Bruker, a top mass spectrometry company and a rising force in in vitro diagnostics [noted by Eye on IVD a few months earlier] has bought Nanostring, an innovative research tool company, for $392.6 million. They are also assuming some liabilities of the company, which had been in bankruptcy. No word on those totals, though I assume they include the $31M payment of an award to 10xGenomics, which a court ordered recently.
- nCounter is the main NanoString product. It profiles the expression of hundreds of genes, proteins, miRNAs, or copy number variations, simultaneously with high sensitivity. There’s no amplification, which can add bias. That makes it faster, easier and less room for errors. In the picture above, nCounter is analyzing the kidney of a mouse with West Nile Disease. It provides a picture of the very complex immune reaction to a threat – which genes down-regulate (produce less RNA/proteins) or up-regulate (produce more).
- Despite it’s useful technology, systems cost over $300,000. Only so many customers for this. The business requires sales and proper pricing and marketing of consumables. The company had legal troubles, and Nanostring’s business was in bankruptcy. Bruker (and stalking horse bidder Patient Square Capital, who submitted a lower bid) saw value in the company’s technology, correctly in my view.
- In my opinion, Bruker did not buy this technology just to have a good research tool. Despite it’s use in research use only designation, the tool has potential in diagnostics and is being used in some cases for applications on human patients. How that shakes out will remain to be seen.
- But it is not fantastic. The technology is currently being used in breast cancer testing, as part of a serviced test. And there are more studies demonstrating its use in companion diagnostic – https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31164012/ and a 2016 one. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27917695/ indicating its utility when samples are degraded. Other studies show its use in analzying the utility of chemotherapy adjuvant therapy. The University of Utah owns several systems and offers various cancer progression and profile tests – https://uofuhealth.utah.edu/huntsman/shared-resources/bmp/molecular-diagnostics/services/nanostring
- This is a part of a pattern of acquisitions from this company, we detailed their last when they bought ELITECH. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/bruker-goes-tier-status-ivd-elitechgroup-acquisition-bruce-carlson-b40be/? Bruker has entered into agreements to acquire companies including Chemspeed Technologies, Tornado Spectral Systems, Nion, Spectral Instruments Imaging, and Nanophoton Corporation. Will there be more?
