 |
| GE Healthcare CEO John Dineen |
GE Healthcare is expanding its footprint in the life sciences industry, snapping up the cell culture, gene modulation and magnetic bead business of Thermo Fisher Scientific for a bit more than a billion dollars. GE plans to add the technologies to its life sciences unit.
Thermo Fisher offered GE the chance to beef up its work serving the drug discovery and manufacturing fields as Thermo Fisher follows through with a divestiture program aimed at gaining the European Commission's final OK to buy out Life Technologies.
The deal will add Thermo Fisher's Hyclone cell culture media and sera products, which GE says will fit in nicely with its existing work in cell biology research and biomanufacturing. The gene modulation technologies can be added to GE's offerings to investigators while the magnetic beads will expand its presence in protein analysis and medical diagnostics. Altogether, these products delivered $250 million in sales revenue last year.
GE Healthcare CEO John Dineen touted the deal in a statement as a big plus. "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. Combining GE's engineering expertise with our capabilities in life sciences is already bringing great benefits to industry, research and patients."
- here's the release