Deal is part of firm’s decision to focus on IVIS imaging business.

Caliper Life Sciences completed the sale of Xenogen Biosciences, a subsidiary that provides in vivo preclinical CRO services, to Taconic Farms for approximately $11 million. The transaction represents a step in the company’s strategy to divest noncore assets to enhance its focus on its core products, applications, and services like its IVIS® imaging tools business.

Caliper gained XenBio when it bought Xenogen in 2006. Approximately 90% of XenBio’s business relates to animal production and phenotyping services, which are not essential to growing Caliper’s core IVIS instrumentation business. The sale of XenBio to Taconic is expected to have minimal impact on Caliper’s bottom-line performance and cash flows in 2010.

“This sale further improves our balance sheet and will enable us to drive greater investment in our IVIS imaging business,” comments Kevin Hrusovsky, president and CEO of Caliper. “At the same time, through the remainder of our CDAS (formerly NovaScreen) business unit, we are able to consolidate our strategic preclinical CRO services in a single location and maintain our ability to offer services that are supportive of Caliper’s core technologies.”

Taconic’s expertise is expected to enhance the supply and availability of Caliper’s Light Producing Transgenic Animal (LPTA®) models for Caliper’s IVIS customers. Concurrent with the sale of XenBio, Caliper and Taconic entered into strategic partnership and licensing agreements under which Taconic will distribute Caliper’s LPTA models. Taconic will also obtain nonexclusive rights to perform imaging services under Caliper’s extensive patent estate in this field. Caliper is eligible to future payments in connection with the distribution and supply deal for Caliper’s LPTA mouse models as well as under the imaging services license arrangement.

The LPTA mouse strains to be distributed by Taconic were developed by Caliper for use with its IVIS instruments to determine the safety and efficacy of drug candidates. In addition, Taconic will be able to create new mouse models for in vivo imaging applications for use by customers of IVIS instruments.

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