West Coast Editor

Gaining a method for purifying DNA and other nucleic acids - including a line of kits already on the market - tools company Invitrogen Corp. acquired Kent, UK-based DNA Research Innovations Ltd. for $35 million in cash and up to $30 million more in research and development milestones.

Invitrogen's stock (NASDAQ:IVGN) closed Thursday at $55.93, down 29 cents.

"Nucleic acid purification was an area where our customers had a lot of demand because it's such a critical component to the other downstream processes," said Greg Geissman, public relations manager for Carlsbad, Calif.-based Invitrogen. "Really, this goes back to plugging in those areas where we didn't have a large offering before."

In three steps, privately held DRI's ChargeSwitch Technology can extract nucleic acids from bacteria, tissues, blood, forensic samples and buccal cells, and works on surfaces such as magnetic beads, microtiter plates, columns and cartridges. CST allows for a quicker process and does away with chaotropes, alcohols and assorted undesirable reagents.

Invitrogen has been working on nucleic acid purification for the past 18 months.

"It wasn't really in anticipation of this deal," Geissman said. "Earlier in the summer, we introduced a nucleic acid purification kit." The DRI deal offers a new technology that Invitrogen hopes to advance. The milestones involve "new product introduction measures" involving products currently in DRI's pipeline, he told BioWorld Today.

"We're fairly confident they're milestones that can be achieved," he said.

Invitrogen recently made news with a deal for lead development and optimization with South San Francisco-based Exelixis Inc., for which the company is providing validated high-throughput screening assays in single live cells. (See BioWorld Today, Aug. 13, 2004.)

Also this summer, Invitrogen formed a new wholly owned subsidiary, called Biological Defense Systems Inc., to focus on research and development of vaccines, therapeutics and detection technologies in the anti-terrorism push. Located in Frederick, Md., BDS consolidated the company's biosecurity applications. (See BioWorld Today, July 14, 2004.)

"The main thing to take from the DRI acquisition and all of our work in this area is that Invitrogen's main goal is to have an offering along the entire continuum [of drug discovery and development]," Geissman said. "We have to continue to listen to what our customers are saying."

Meanwhile, the DRI buyout is not expected to change what investors have been led to expect.

"As of now, we're not changing our guidance," Geissman said.