A Diagnostics & Imaging Week

Olympus Life and Material Science Europa (Hamburg, Germany), a subsidiary of Olympus (Tokyo), has acquired privately held microfluidics company Advalytix AG (Brunnthal, Germany).

Financial details of the transaction were not reported.

Olympus said the acquisition demonstrates its commitment to its fast-growing in vitro diagnostics and life sciences businesses. The deal provides Olympus with technologies to maximize growth in innovative analytical systems.

“[This] acquisition represents great opportunities for Olympus worldwide,” said Stephen Wasserman, group vice president of the Diagnostic Systems Group at Olympus America (Melville, New York). “It positions Olympus at the very forefront of the latest technological developments in the life sciences, puts us at the center of business opportunities in this rapidly expanding field, and helps us sustain our double-digit growth.”

Olympus said it would apply Advalytix’s technology to enhance analytical reactions on diagnostic instrumentation and to expand into new areas such as single-cell PCR (polymerase chain reaction) or lab-on-a-chip in routine diagnostics.

Advalytix’s technology has been commercialized with the SlideBooster hybridization and AdvaWash washing stations, targeted at the microarray market. The company is also developing products and protocols for the genetic analysis of single cells.

Olympus Life and Material Science Europa describes its business as “[uniting] the fields of microscopy and diagnostics, covering a broad spectrum of customer needs ranging from microscope systems for life and material science to high-performance diagnostics instruments and reagents for IVD laboratories.”

It is the worldwide center of excellence for Olympus IVD reagents, lab automation and bioanalytical software.

Recom Managed Systems (Studio City, California) reported that it has signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding with TZ Medical (Portland, Oregon) for the creation of an exclusive joint venture between the parties.

Under the proposed joint venture, TZ will contribute its entire line of intracardiac catheters and Recom will utilize its signal-amplification and noise-reduction technologies to create a new catheter line. The parties will split the profits of the joint venture equally.

“We are pleased that our researchers continue to develop new uses for our unique noise-reduction technologies, even as we prepare to proceed to market with our initial product, the Model 100 Heart Monitor,” said Pamela Bunes, president and CEO of Recom. “We will continue to identify opportunities like this joint venture with TZ Medical to expand the use of our technology in areas with significant growth and revenue potential to create value for Recom’s shareholders.”

An intracardiac catheter is a flexible tube that is inserted through a vein in the leg and fed into the heart to withdraw samples of blood, measure pressures within the heart’s chambers or vessels, or inject contrast media. When used for diagnostic purposes, the catheter is equipped with electrodes connected to electrocardiographic monitors that allow physicians to evaluate cardiac function, including arrhythmia, or irregular heartbeat. The physician can then predict the patient’s risk for future cardiac events and determine the best therapy.

With current technologies, the presence of interference in the reading makes the true reaction of the heart to the diagnostic or clinical procedure difficult to measure. The proposed joint venture will examine the potential for Recom’s amplifier to substantially reduce this noise in the next generation of TZ’s respected line of catheter products, allowing physicians to make more accurate diagnoses and better therapeutic choices.

Recom is an emerging life-sciences company focused on the monitoring and detection of disease through continuous biomedical signal monitoring.

TZ Medical makes pacemaker monitors and cardiac event monitors.

In other dealmaking news:

• Science Applications International (SAI; San Diego) said it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire GeoCenters (Newton, Massachusetts) and its subsidiaries EAI Corp. (Abingdon, Maryland) and Focis Associates (also Newton).

“This acquisition gives us the opportunity to enhance the level of services and solutions we offer our customers in the area of homeland security and defense,” said Ken Dahlberg, SAI chairman and CEO.

The transaction is expected to close in September, subject to customary closing conditions. Geo-Centers is an engineering and professional services firm, providing research and development for chemical and biological detection, infrastructure assessment and protection, life science research, rapid response equipment and support, and sensor systems and integration.

Its customers include the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Defense, as well as state and local governments and agencies.

The company also develops training course materials and trains first responders at the DHS Center for Domestic Preparedness and provides preparedness and response services and products to government and private industry clients.