A Diagnostics & Imaging Week

Sequenom (San Diego) reported the pricing of its previously disclosed public offering of 5.5 million shares of its common stock at a public offering price of $15.50 a share.

All of the shares are being offered by the company. The underwriters have a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 825,000 shares of common stock.

Sequenom said it expects the net proceeds from the offering to be used for the development of diagnostic tests for use on its MassArray system and other platforms, and for general corporate purposes.

Lehman Brothers and UBS Investment Bank are joint book-running managers in this offering. The co-managers are Leerink Swann & Co., Lazard Capital Markets, Oppenheimer & Co. and Rodman & Renshaw.

Luminex (Austin, Texas) reported the closing of its previously disclosed underwritten public offering of 4,025,000 shares of its common stock, including 525,000 shares issued in connection with the underwriters' exercise of their over-allotment option following the pricing of the offering.

The offering price to public was $19.91 per share.

The company said the net proceeds from the offering were about $74.3 million, after deducting estimated expenses and underwriting discounts and commissions.

Luminex said it intends to use the net proceeds from the offering for general corporate purposes, including research and development, potential acquisitions and capital expenditures.

J.P. Morgan Securities and UBS Investment Bank were joint book-running managers for the offering. Avondale Partners, Canaccord Adams and Leerink Swann were co-managers.

Luminex develops biological testing technologies with applications throughout the life sciences industry. The company's xMAP system is an open-architecture, multi-analyte technology platform that is designed to deliver fast, accurate and cost-effective bioassay results to markets as diverse as pharmaceutical drug discovery, clinical diagnostics and biomedical research, including the genomics and proteomics research markets. Earlier last week, Luminex had priced its underwritten public offering of 3.5 million shares of its common stock. The company has granted the underwriters a 30-day over-allotment option to buy up to an additional 525,000 shares of common stock. The offering is expected to close June 30.

In other financing news:

• Isis Pharmaceuticals (Carlsbad, California) reported that Abbott Laboratories (Abbott Park, Illinois) has invested an additional $20 million in Ibis Biosciences, an Isis subsidiary. The investment will allow Ibis to further develop the Ibis T5000 Biosensor System, which offers a solution for rapid identification and characterization of infectious agents.

By making this investment, Abbott retains the exclusive option to purchase the remaining equity in Ibis for an additional $175 million to $190 million through June 30, 2009, depending on whether certain pre-negotiated milestones have been completed.

If Abbott acquires Ibis, in addition to the purchase price for Ibis' equity, Isis will receive an earnout tied to the achievement of certain cumulative sales.

Including this investment, Abbott has invested $40 million in Ibis and holds 18.6% of the equity in Ibis. The remaining Ibis equity is owned by Isis.

"We are aggressively accelerating the expansion of our commercial products into larger market opportunities, and this recent financing from Abbott will provide the capital to continue on this path," said Michael Treble, president of Ibis. "In just a few short months, we have made significant progress toward completing milestones identified by Abbott and Ibis that will increase the value of Ibis and move us forward toward clinical diagnostics."

• Signature Genomic Laboratories (Spokane, Washington) reported that jVen Capital, a life sciences investment company with a focus in the areas of biotechnology, diagnostics and devices, has acquired an equity interest in the company. In conjunction with the investment, Evan Jones, the principal of jVen Capital, has been appointed chairman of Signature's board.

Signature, founded in 2003, says it was the first laboratory to provide microarray-based cytogenetic diagnostics with its SignatureChip.