By Sam Boughedda
Investing.com -- Genome analysis company Bionano Genomics Inc (NASDAQ:BNGO) announced Tuesday that it has agreed on a $100 million cash and equity deal to acquire software firm BioDiscovery Inc.
Bionano shares rose 4% on Tuesday, to $5.34.
Part of the deal's equity payment is subject to a vesting period for ‘key employees.’ Meanwhile, a portion of the cash is dependent on fully integrating optical genome mapping (OGM) data into BioDiscovery’s software platform.
Bionano said the deal would broaden its market leadership in digital cytogenetics and comprehensive genome analysis. It will speed up the adoption of OGM, by simplifying the data analysis workflow through the integration of BioDiscovery’s NxClinical software solution.
Soheil Shams, the founder and CEO of BioDiscovery, will join Bionano as chief informatics officer.
“Over the last twenty years, BioDiscovery’s talented team has developed best-in-class software solutions to enable broader adoption of genomics technologies. NxClinical is one of the most promising tools that integrates NGS and microarray data across the genome in one consolidated view, and we are thrilled to welcome Soheil and his team to Bionano as we work to transform the way the world sees the genome," said Erik Holmlin, CEO of Bionano Genomics.
“This acquisition accelerates our efforts to make OGM ubiquitous by enabling us to simplify the assessment of clinically-relevant variants in cytogenomics applications, potentially reducing interpretation time per sample and expanding our reach into the discovery and translational research markets where the combination of NGS and OGM can reveal more answers in genetic disease and cancer research.”
The acquisition is expected to close before October 22.