Techne gains small molecule, peptide, and antibody offerings.

Techne is paying £75 million (roughly $123.68 million) for Tocris, a supplier of reagents for nonclinical life science research. Tocris’ current offering of over 2,900 chemical, peptide, and antibody products will expand Techne’s product portfolio. Techne, through its subsidiary R&D Systems, develops, manufactures, and distributes purified cytokines, antibodies, and assay kits.

“Strategically, the fit is excellent, as both Tocris and R&D Systems have many customers in common and yet our product ranges are entirely complementary,” notes Tocris CEO Laurence Ede. “Consequently, the combined business will represent far more of a one-stop-shop for life scientists and be ideally placed to compete in the global market.”

Tocris products have traditionally been chemically based small compounds, sold in highly purified forms and with agonistic or antagonistic properties in a variety of biological processes. R&D Systems’ products are biologically active reagents used in life science experimentation with well-defined properties.  

Tocris’ revenues last year reached approximately £11.7 million pounds (almost $19.3 million). Techne anticipates the acquisition increasing its fourth quarter fiscal year 2011 sales by approximately $3.5 million. The deal is expected to be slightly dilutive to Techne’s fourth quarter fiscal 2011 and fiscal year 2012 net earnings, due to the impact of acquisition accounting related to the step-up in basis for acquired inventories and the amortization of intangibles. 

Tocris’ products are used in both in vitro and in vivo experiments to understand diseases and as part of the initial drug discovery process. The principal end users are nonclinical laboratory researchers working in areas such as neuroscience, cardiovascular disease, endocrinology, and cellular processes.

From a cellular process perspective, Tocris products are used to study angiogenesis, apoptosis, cell cycle, cell metabolism, cellular skeleton and motor proteins, extracellular matrix, adhesion molecules, signal transduction, and stem cells. Tocris reagents are also used from a pharmacological perspective to study ion channels, 7-TM receptors, nuclear receptors, enzyme-linked receptors, transporter molecules, and enzymes.

Tocris will continue its product development, marketing, and sales activities from Bristol, U.K. It will also coordinate with R&D Systems and its related European and Chinese entities to expanded product distribution into the worldwide market.

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