A Medical Device Daily

Abbott Laboratories (Abbott Park, Illinois) reported that it has exercised its option to purchase the remaining equity ownership in Isis Pharmaceuticals subsidiary Ibis Biosciences (both Carlsbad, California) for a closing purchase price of $175 million. In addition to the closing purchase price, Isis will receive earn-out payments from Abbott tied to post-closing sales of Ibis systems, including instruments and assay kits.

Earlier this year, Abbott invested $40 million in Ibis in exchange for about 18.6% of Ibis' outstanding equity. This investment, along with the $175 million that would be due at closing, would result in a total acquisition price of $215 million plus earn-out payments.

The closing of the acquisition of the remaining equity ownership in Ibis is subject to the satisfaction of the terms and conditions of a stock purchase agreement that has been executed by the parties, including obtaining U.S. antitrust clearance and is expected to occur in January.

"Abbott's confidence in Ibis is reflected in its decision to invest in [our] technology and to exercise its option to purchase Ibis. We have already presented development plans for the next-generation instrument that will facilitate our rapid growth into clinical diagnostics," said Michael Treble, president of Ibis. "This year we have made substantial progress by advancing our broad pathogen detection and characterization capabilities and establishing a foundation for our commercial clinical diagnostic products. We look forward to continuing this progress."

Stafford O'Kelly, vice president, molecular diagnostics at Abbott, said, "The broad applicability of Ibis' technology has been demonstrated in biodefense applications, microbial forensics and infectious disease detection and surveillance, and we believe that it has the potential to be a powerful tool in the detection and surveillance of infectious diseases in the hospital and clinical settings."

Ibis Biosciences has developed and is commercializing the Ibis T5000 biosensor system for rapid identification and characterization of infectious agents. The Ibis T5000 is currently intended for research use only and not for use in diagnostic procedures.

It is capable of identifying virtually all bacteria, viruses and fungi, and can provide information about drug resistance, virulence and strain type of these pathogens. Commercial applications for the Ibis T5000 Biosensor System include epidemiologic surveillance, monitoring of pandemic diseases, identification of emerging or previously unknown pathogens, forensic characterization of human samples, identification of sources of hospital-associated infections, and, in the future, human infectious disease diagnostics.