Danish-American contract research organization Clinical Microbiomics has acquired DNASense ApS, a Danish CRO that’s focused on long-read DNA and RNA sequencing technologies, the companies announced March 1. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
“Adding [DNASense] to our toolbox paves the way for synergies with our bioinformatics and allows for deeper exploration of the microbiome’s complexities that will accelerate new discoveries,” Bjørn Nielsen, chief scientific officer at Clinical Microbiomics, said in the release.
Clinical Microbiomics specializes in analysis of the microbiome and the metabolome—the microbial ecosystems present in living organisms and the network of metabolites present in the cell, respectively—for pharmas running preclinical and clinical trials. By making it possible to sequence long fragments of DNA and RNA, DNASense’s tech will allow Clinical Microbiomics to conduct more thorough assessments of the structure and function of microbes and metabolites, among other capabilities.
The purchase also rounds out the first phase of a larger strategy by the CRO to build out its ecosystem of microbiome services so it can go beyond human applications and into animal and environmental ones, the press release said. The company has acquired three new service providers in the past 18 months. Before buying DNASense, Clinical Microbiomics purchased MS-Omics, a Danish company that specializes in metabolite profiling, and merged with CosmosID, a microbiome bioinformatics company based in Maryland.