New business will be housed in a £15 million facility to be built in Cardiff.
Quotient Bioresearch acquired GE Healthcare’s radiochemical custom synthesis operation, Amersham Radiolabeling Services, which is based in Cardiff, U.K. Quotient said it will also invest up to £15.0 million ($24.7 million) in a laboratory in Cardiff to support the acquisition and take on 75 Amersham Radiolabeling Services staff.
Amersham Radiolabeling Services offers custom synthesis of carbon-14 and tritium-labeled compounds to the pharma and biotech industries. Quotient will combine the business with its own radiochemistry and metabolism activities to create a new business unit, Quotient Chemistry & Metabolism.
Completion of the new facility will be timed to coincide with GE Healthcare ceasing its radiolabelling operations at the end of March 2010. Quotient says that the transfer of operations from GE Healthcare will be staged such that it will cover global sales activities immediately, while tritium and carbon-14 radiolabeling services will be transferred by the end of 2009 and 2010, respectively.
The Amersham Radiolabeling Services deal represents Quotient’s seventh acquisition since it was established in early 2007. Most recently in May, the company acquired Charles River Laboratories’ Edinburgh clinical research facility (formerly Inveresk Clinical Research). It will be combined with Pharmaceutical Profiles, a Phase I drug development services company acquired by Quotient in December 2008, to form a Quotient Clinical.
