MDS Analytical acquires Blueshift Biotechnologies to strengthen cellular analysis offerings

June 30, 2008 -- MDS Analytical Technologies (Sunnyvale, CA), says it has acquired Blueshift Biotechnologies (Sunnyvale, CA), maker of the the IsoCyte benchtop laser scanning cytometer and developer of screening platforms for life sciences research.The sale price was $13 million; the acquisition expands MDS's capabilities in cellular analysis as well as its sales and service.

With the acquisition, MDS's cellular imaging product line now offers life sciences and drug discovery researchers a more complete solution to conduct high content screening (HCS) and high content analysis (HCA), both growing trends in pharmaceutical screening and life sciences research. Blueshift's IsoCyte conducts rapid image analysis of large populations of cells in a microtiter plate whole-well format. Whole-well, rapid cellular analysis enables a cost-effective solution for the adoption of HCS and HCA into high throughput screening environments.

"This acquisition fills a gap in our current product portfolio, allowing us to offer our pharmaceutical research customers fast and simple cellular analysis with a line of instrumentation that images the whole well at true high throughput screening rates," said Andy Boorn, president of MDS Analytical Technologies. "There are currently fourteen IsoCyte instruments installed at academic, biotech and pharmaceutical companies in North America. With our extensive global sales force, we have the ability to bring this novel product to a wider global market."

MDS Analytical Technologies is a newly established business unit of MDS Inc., and is comprised of two main lines of business: The Sciex product portfolio specializes in mass spectrometry through its joint ventures with analytical instrumentation and life sciences companies Applied Biosystems and PerkinElmer Inc. The Molecular Devices product portfolio is known for bioanalytical measurement systems.