Vivione Biosciences will acquire Trillium Diagnostics for $1.5 million in cash and $4 million in common shares of Vivione along with potential milestone-related payments of up to $9.5 million.

Trillium is focused on immune-profiling that brings the approach of personalized medicine to infectious disease and sepsis diagnostics. The company’s lead product, Leuko64, is a quantitative test for neutrophil CD64 expression, a marker directly associated with sepsis diagnosis. The company holds licenses or patents for three biomarkers, including neutrophil CD64, soluble CD163, and circulating cell free DNA.

Vivione offers RAPID-B®, its high performance, integrated microbiology/infectious disease diagnostic system that uses hardware, software, and wetware.

“The ability to deploy the proven and effective Trillium assays on the Vivione RAPID-B diagnostic platform is an ideal way to leverage the speed and sensitivity of Vivione's platform technology in the testing of sepsis and severe infections,” said Kevin Kuykendall, chairman and CEO of Vivione. “Besides providing Vivione with over $1 million in annualized revenues from the sale of products in Trillium's current European clinical markets as well as research sales in the U.S., it allows Vivione to incorporate the RAPID-B systems into the FDA certification process for Leuko64, providing valuable experience for subsequent certification efforts on infection screening.”

Upon completion of the acquisition, Trillium will be a wholly owned subsidiary of Vivione Biosciences. Trillium's founder and president, Bruce H. Davis, M.D., will join Vivione’s senior management team as CSO and will be added to the board of directors. The financing is anticipated to close in April. 

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