Invitrogen in strategic merger
Invitrogen Corporation, global life sciences firm, and Sentigen Holding Corp have entered into a definitive merger agreement.
Invitrogen Corporation, global life sciences firm, and Sentigen Holding Corp have entered into a definitive merger agreement.
Invitrogen will acquire New Jersey-based Sentigen in a cash transaction at a price of US$3.37 per share, or approximately $25.9m for all shares currently issued and outstanding.
Sentigen's proprietary Tango Assay System and divi-sion arrested Assay Ready Cells provide a novel approach to screen G-protein coupled receptors (GPCR) and other key drug target classes, as well as providing a methodology to convert live cell assays into ready-to-use consumable products. Sentigen will become a part of Invitrogen's Discovery Sciences Business based in Wisconsin, US.
The Tango assay platform can be used for measuring protein-protein interactions in living cells, which can be an important way to determine the function of a protein of interest. Sentigen's Assay Ready Cells technology is designed to improve the quality and consistency of cellular assays used in drug screening.
'Adding Sentigen's capabilities to our drug discovery platform gives researchers an even broader array of solutions for GPCR screening, profiling and other cellular studies,' said Nick Ecos, vice president and gen-eral manager of Invitrogen's Discovery Sciences business.
Other recent developments by Invitrogen include the launch of two products in its gold standard Lipofectamine transfection reagent product family.
Lipofectamine 2000 is a significant seller for Invitrogen, and the company is hoping to continue this success with Lipofectamine LTX, which advances in transfecting difficult cell lines and demonstrates lower toxicity than Lipofectamine 2000.
Invitrogen has also added a transfection reagent specifically for RNAi work, Lipofectamine RNAi MAX.