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Roche said on Thursday it would pay shareholders in the
privately held Californian company $190 million upfront and up
to a further $235 million depending on the future success of its
products.
The deal gives Roche access to GeneWEAVE's "Smarticles"
technology, which allows for the rapid identification of multi
drug-resistant organisms direct from clinical samples, without
the need for traditional preparation processes.
Better testing is seen as central to fighting drug-resistant
bacteria. It should allow doctors to make faster and more
accurate diagnoses and give patients the appropriate drug to
kill their particular infection.
Many antibiotics used today are broad spectrum products, which
can kill a wide range of bugs but are also responsible for
breeding resistance because they damage gut flora, creating an
environment for new infections to flourish.
Roche has been building up its presence in antibacterial
research since buying Switzerland's Polyphor, a developer of new
medicines for resistant bacteria, in November 2013.
Although Roche pioneered some of the more modern antibiotics,
like many large drugmakers it wound down its research at the end
of the 1990s, given the poor returns in the field compared to
other therapy areas such as cancer.
Several large pharmaceutical companies are looking again at
antibiotics, given increased emphasis by governments on the
resistance problem, with Merck agreeing a major deal to buy
Cubist for more than $8 billion in December 2014.
(Reporting by Ben Hirschler. Editing by Jane Merriman)
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