Roche has paid 190 million dollar for the acquisition of GeneWEAVE (Los Gatos, CA), an American company that specializes in molecular diagnostics. GeneWEAVE’s shareholders even can receive 235 million dollar more in milestone payments.
GeneWEAVE’s first system in development is the vivoDx—a fully automated, random-access system designed to rapidly recognize multidrug-resistant organisms. It quickly identifies the bacteria attacking a patient and which antibiotics are suitable to treat the patient. This is done directly on clinical samples, without the need for traditional enrichment, culture or sample preparation processes, which leads to fast results. For example in the case of sepsis, where rapid diagnosis is crucial, this can be of major importance. One in two patient dies, but this number may drop significantly if the right treatment is started immediately.
Biocartis (Mechelen) also aims at bringing a similar test on the market to use with its automated diagnostic platform, Idylla, by 2017.
