Life Technologies Acquires Compendia Bioscience

CARLSBAD, Calif., Oct. 8, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Life Technologies (NASDAQ: LIFE) today announced the acquisition of Compendia Bioscience, a preeminent cancer bioinformatics company widely used by the pharmaceutical industry to identify novel gene targets for drug discovery and development. Its deep oncology expertise and high-value, proprietary assets enhance Life's diagnostic development capabilities across multiple platforms, including next-generation sequencing, qPCR and proteome analysis.

Compendia's existing business, which will continue under the leadership of its current management team, adds an established base of pharmaceutical industry customers for Life Technologies' platforms. Compendia's oncology data is widely utilized by leading pharmaceutical companies in their drug development work and will extend Life's abilities to both develop its own tests and to partner with pharmaceutical companies in companion diagnostic development.

"We have created the optimal foundation to drive progress in personalized medicine," said Gregory T. Lucier, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Life Technologies. "By combining the acquisitions of Pinpoint Genomics, Navigenics and Compendia, we now possess the full spectrum capability to develop and commercialize high-value cancer diagnostics where there is currently great unmet need."

The recent launch of Pervenio™ Lung RS, a first-of-its-kind prognostic test, underscores Life Technologies' strategy to focus initially on lung cancer, a highly underserved disease. The company plans to utilize the extensive content in Compendia to springboard to other areas of oncology.

Preeminent Assets Widely Used by Leading Pharmaceutical Companies
Compendia holds one of the world's largest and most comprehensive sets of mutation profiles, gene expression data and cellular biomarkers that have been gathered from more than 62,000 cancer patients. Oncomine™, the company's cloud-based analytics tool, integrates high-throughput cancer profiling data across a large volume of cancer types to allow users to mine it for correlations among genetic signatures, clinical status, and drug response markers.

The proprietary technology is especially useful to Compendia's well-established pharmaceutical customer base. They use it to ascertain the genes most frequently mutated across thousands of samples of a given cancer type, as well as the biomarkers associated with biological responses to specific classes of compounds. Equally valuable is Compendia's OncoScore™ product, a tool that helps optimize the clinical trials process by stratifying patients based on genetic signatures so that individuals most likely to respond to specific drugs are included.

"Compendia has become an integral part of the pharmaceutical industry's cancer drug discovery programs, and in joining Life Technologies, we'll gain the opportunity to expand the utility of Compendia even further," said Daniel R. Rhodes, Compendia's Chief Executive Officer and co-founder, who will join Life Technologies following the acquisition.

Compendia co-founder Arul Chinnaiyan, M.D., Ph.D., a pioneer in the field of cancer research, will serve as strategic advisor to Life Technologies, helping to shape the company's further steps into personalized medicine.

Cancer Biology Expertise Enhances Life's Diagnostics Development Capability
"Compendia is highly regarded by its customers as a preeminent source of cancer biology expertise," said Ronnie Andrews, President of Medical Sciences at Life Technologies. "That expertise will serve as a content engine to drive development of diagnostic content across the breadth of Life platforms.

"Initially, tests like Pervenio™ Lung RS, will be offered as a service through our CLIA laboratory, but our longer-term goal is to commercialize diagnostic products on Life platforms for use in hospitals labs, where the majority of patients are treated," Andrews said. "All patients should have access to an opportunity to benefit from the extensive knowledge base that has been gained through decades of research."

In addition to enabling Life Technologies' ability to develop its own lab-developed and commercial tests, the Compendia acquisition will enhance Life's companion diagnostics effort and positions the company as a partner of choice for pharma. Life can now offer best-in-class products and services for target discovery and validation, biomarker analysis, clinical sample testing, companion diagnostics development and clinical implementation.

Life Technologies plans to develop a clinical version of Oncomine™, which will allow physicians to compare their patients' genetic signatures against large data sets to determine the most effective drug protocols. A seamless transfer of the bioinformatics data into easy-to-use, actionable information will be possible with the treating physician portal repurposed from the Navigenics acquisition.

Life Technologies will also incorporate the Compendia oncology workflow within its Ion Reporter™ software to accelerate its lead in building the most robust bioinformatics offering in the industry. Researchers sequencing tumor samples on the Ion Personal Genome Machine (PGM™), for example, will be able to leverage the insight gained from the thousands of samples already in Compendia's database in an effort to identify targetable mutations.

The acquisition represents another significant step in Life Technologies' strategy to develop its medical sciences business through internal development, partnerships and select acquisitions. The financial terms of the deal are not being disclosed. The acquisition of Compendia Bioscience is expected to be neutral to 2012 earnings and accretive to the company's overall ROIC by 2015.

Ion Reporter™ and Ion Personal Genome Machine™ are Research Use Only and not intended for use in diagnostic procedures.

About Life Technologies
Life Technologies Corporation (NASDAQ: LIFE) is a global biotechnology company with customers in more than 160 countries using its innovative solutions to solve some of today's most difficult scientific challenges. Quality and innovation are accessible to every lab with its reliable and easy-to-use solutions spanning the biological spectrum with more than 50,000 products for agricultural biotechnology, translational research, molecular medicine and diagnostics, stem cell-based therapies, forensics, food safety and animal health. Its systems, reagents and consumables represent some of the most cited brands in scientific research including: Ion Torrent™, Applied Biosystems®, Invitrogen™, GIBCO®, Ambion®, Molecular Probes®, Novex®, and TaqMan®. Life Technologies employs approximately 10,400 people and upholds its ongoing commitment to innovation with more than 4,000 patents and exclusive licenses. LIFE had sales of $3.7 billion in 2011. Visit us at our website: http://www.lifetechnologies.com.

Life Technologies' Safe Harbor Statement
This press release includes forward-looking statements about Life Technologies' anticipated results that involve risks and uncertainties. Some of the information contained in this press release, including, but not limited to, statements as to industry trends and Life Technologies' plans, objectives, expectations and strategy for its business, contains forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results or events to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Any statements that are not statements of historical fact are forward-looking statements. When used, the words "believe," "plan," "intend," "anticipate," "target," "estimate," "expect" and the like, and/or future tense or conditional constructions ("will," "may," "could," "should," etc.), or similar expressions, identify certain of these forward-looking statements. Important factors which could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements are detailed in filings made by Life Technologies with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Life Technologies undertakes no obligation to update or revise any such forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances.

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Life Technologies Contact
Suzanne Clancy
760-602-4545
858-205-4235 (mobile)
[email protected]

SOURCE Life Technologies

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