Syngene International acquires Strand Life Sciences' assets

Contract research firm Syngene International Ltd today said it has acquired assets of Strand Life Sciences related to systems biology and pharma bioinformatics services among others for an undisclosed sum.
As part of a deal reached between the two firms, Syngene will also acquire the target dossier business and rights to NGS (next generation sequencing) data analytics and Sarchitect platforms and Heptox.
Commenting on the development, Syngene International CEO Jonathan Hunt said: "We believe Strand's bioinformatics platforms not only complement our existing integrated service platforms but will also meet our customers growing needs for bioinformatics and data analytic support."
He further said given the vast volumes of genetic material sequence data that is being generated globally, there is an increasing focus on biological information management and data analytics in drug discovery and development.

"Syngene is constantly looking for new opportunities to expand its service offerings and plans to expand into areas such as NGS, translational R&D, predictive toxicology and pre-emptive target validation services, all of which require strong bioinformatics capabilities," Hunt said.
Strand Life Sciences Chairman and Managing Director Vijay Chandru said the deal with Syngene gives it access to technologies from Strand to form part of its integrated discovery service offerings.

"This transaction is also a key step for Strand to focus its energies on personalised medicine through clinical applications of all its genomics technologies," he added.
The deal gives Syngene access to Strand's patented Virtual Liver model and the NGS analytics platform, Syngene said in a statement.

The Virtual Liver model is able to predict the toxic effect of different drugs or chemicals on the liver (both rat and human) using information from laboratory-based experiments prior to actual testing on live animals or humans.
Strand NGS is an integrated platform that provides analysis, management and visualisation tools for next-generation sequencing data, the statement added.
Bioinformatics is a rapidly emerging area that promises tremendous growth potential. According to Transparency Market Research, the global bioinformatics market was estimated at USD 2.3 billion in 2012 and is forecasted to reach a market size of USD 9.1 billion in 2018, at a CAGR of 25.4 per cent, it said.