Meridian Bioscience, Inc. has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the business of GenePOC Inc., a Quebec City, Quebec, Canada based provider of molecular diagnostic instruments and assays. Founded in 2007, GenePOC has approximately 100 employees and generated total revenues of less than $1 million in calendar 2018. Meridian has agreed to make a cash payment at closing of the transaction of $50 million with future payments totaling up to an additional $70 million contingent upon the successful achievement of certain technical development milestones and sales thresholds.

With the acquisition, Meridian will be getting GenePOC’s state-of-the art revogene™ molecular diagnostics platform, which offers sample to result testing for single tests, as well as flexible multiplexing capability. The cstrepstrompany believes revogene™ is a perfect fit with Meridian’s stated strategy to provide gastrointestinal disease and core respiratory illness diagnostics solutions for the diverse needs of complex medical health systems. revogene™ is an FDA-cleared platform that currently has three FDA-cleared assays, including C. difficile, Group A Strep, and Group B Strep. Those three assays comprise a vast majority of Meridian’s current total molecular diagnostics sales, thus enabling it to immediately offer this new platform and technology to existing customers seeking better workflow and less hands-on time than Meridian’s current Alethia™ molecular platform can provide. Over time, through its multiplexing capability, revogene™ is expected to allow Meridian to also offer its customers smart panel solutions currently in development and planning.

Jack Kenny, Chief Executive Officer, commented, “We are very excited to be adding the GenePOC technology and team to Meridian. GenePOC provides an exciting new state-of-the-art molecular diagnostics platform to our Diagnostics portfolio. This is a critical element of our strategy to re-position our Diagnostics business for sustainable long-term growth. GenePOC’s revogene™ platform is an excellent fit for our customers and strategy to offer gastrointestinal-focused and other targeted diagnostic solutions to meet the diverse needs of today’s more complex health care system. We welcome the GenePOC team to the Meridian family and look forward to leveraging Meridian’s strong and established commercial infrastructure to offer revogene™ and its menu of assays to our current and new customers.”