Immucor Acquires Sirona Genomics
Transaction culminates successful collaboration to bring MIA FORA™ NGS offering for high resolution HLA typing to market
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NORCROSS, Ga., March 04, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Immucor, Inc., a global leader in transfusion and transplantation diagnostics, today announced it has acquired Mountain View, CA-based Sirona Genomics (Sirona). Under the terms of the October 2014 agreement between the companies, Immucor retained the exclusive option to acquire Sirona during the collaboration, which was focused on the development and commercialization of the MIA FORA NGS offering for high resolution HLA typing. MIA FORA NGS consists of an easy-to-use sample preparation protocol with a proprietary bioinformatics solution.
“We are excited to welcome the Sirona team to our Immucor family,” stated Jeff Binder, Immucor’s Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer. “Since October 2014, the Sirona and Immucor teams have collaborated to bring to market a superior HLA typing product that provides a better matched donor for each transplant patient with less rework for the lab. With the Sirona team onboard, we will drive market adoption of MIA FORA NGS together.”
MIA FORA NGS was launched in December 2015 and is available research use only (RUO) in the US and other countries and received CE Mark approval in February 2016.
“We are excited to become a part of the global Immucor organization, which is focused on enabling better patient care in transfusion and transplant medicine,” stated Michael Mindrinos, Ph.D., President and co-founder of Sirona. “Together, we will continue to work to bring our pipeline of additional MIA FORA NGS-based products to market, including our high volume test kit for bone marrow registry HLA typing.”
Immucor plans to launch a higher volume test kit for bone marrow registry HLA typing later this year.
About MIA FORA NGS
MIA FORA, which roughly translates from Greek to “once,” allows HLA laboratories to achieve high resolution matching with no need for secondary testing to resolve ambiguities – in other words, results in one pass. The MIA FORA NGS sample preparation kit for long-range PCR and library preparation is user friendly with all-in-one master mixes, one PCR set up protocol, one amplification condition for all genes and a unique gene balancing program. Users also have the option to automate front end sample handling – the only one system to offer this labor efficiency with a benchtop footprint, which also helps to reduce manual errors and optimize patient results.
MIA FORA NGS provides superior whole gene coverage of all major HLA gene regions, including whole gene coverage for HLA-A,B, C, DPA1, DQA1, and DQB1; all exons and introns for HLA-DRB1,3,4,5 except partial coverage for exon 6 and intron 1; and all exons and introns between exons 2 and 4 for HLA-DPB1.
The MIA FORA NGS analysis software is uniquely built from the ground up specifically for HLA NGS typing. With an intuitive user interface, the MIA FORA NGS software is the only available product using three algorithms for accurate genotyping calls, a proprietary database for accurate mapping and alignment, and a smart flagging system that enables users to make accurate allele calls rapidly.
To read about the launch of MIA FORA NGS, click here.
To read more about MIA FORA’s CE Mark approval, click here.
About Sirona Genomics
Sirona Genomics was spun out of the Stanford Genome Technology Center (SGTC) at Stanford University with a focus on developing next generation sequencing typing applications specifically for the HLA System. Based in Mountain View, CA, the company was founded by Ron Davis, Ph.D., Director of the SGTC and Professor of Biochemistry and Genetics at Stanford University; Mark Davis, Ph.D., Director of Stanford Institute for Immunity, Transplantation and Infection, and Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at Stanford University; Michael Mindrinos, Ph.D., former Associate Director of the SGTC; Marcelo Fernández-Viña, Ph.D., Professor for the Department of Pathology at Stanford University Medical School, co-Director of the Histocompatibility, Immunogenetics and Disease Profiling Laboratory at Stanford University; Sujatha Krishnakumar, former Life Science Research Associate at SGTC; and Chunlin Wang, former Senior Research Scientist at SGTC.
About Immucor
Founded in 1982, Immucor is a global leader in transfusion and transplantation diagnostics that facilitate patient-donor compatibility. Our mission is to ensure that patients in need of blood, organs or stem cells get the right match that is safe, accessible and affordable. With the right match, we can transform a life together. For more information on Immucor, please visit our website at www.immucor.com.
Michele Howard 770.441.2051