NEWS OF THE W EEK
TOOL COMPANIES EYE DIAGNOSTICS INSTRUMENTATION: Thermo Fisher, Life Technologies acquire clinical diagnostics firms
ONE LAMBDA
One Lambda technicians work with the firm’s organ transplant diagnostics.
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ITH NEW ACQUISITIONS, Thermo Fisher
Scientific and Life Technologies are continuing the push by scientific instrumentation companies into the clinical diagnostics field. Thermo has agreed to buy the transplant diagnostics firm One Lambda for $925 million in cash. Based in Canoga Park, Calif., One Lambda was founded in 1984 by transplantation researcher Paul I. Terasaki. It had sales last year of $182 million, split about evenly between tests for organ compatibility and tests for antibodies that signal rejection. On a conference call, Thermo CEO Marc N. Casper told analysts that Thermo will use its distribution infrastructure to expand One
UNEMPLOYMENT EASES ACS NEWS: 4.2% unemployment rate in LESS BLEAK Unemployment among ACS members is down in 2012 from a record high in 2011.
2012 is slight improvement over 2011
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HE UNEMPLOYMENT RATE for American
Chemical Society members in March 2012 fell to 4.2% from the record high of 4.6% recorded in March 2011, according to the society’s Membership & Scientific Advancement Division (M&SA). The March 2011 unemployment rate was the highest level recorded since the society began tracking employment in 1972. Although still high by historical standards, the 4.2% unemployment rate for ACS members is well below the 8.2% national unemployment rate in March SOURCES: ACS salary survey 2012, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported by the U.S. Bureau of Labor WWW.CEN-ONLIN E .ORG
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Lambda’s presence in emerging markets such as China and Brazil, where its sales are currently small but are growing quickly. At the same time, he said, One Lambda will be a conduit to sell Thermo Fisher products, including its immunosuppressant-drug-monitoring assays, to transplant centers and research labs. The deal continues a buildup of Thermo’s year-old specialty diagnostics division, notes Isaac Ro, a stock analyst at Goldman Sachs who follows the instrumentation industry. In August 2011, the company completed the $3.5 billion acquisition of Phadia, a Swedish maker of allergy and autoimmunity diagnostics. After the One Lambda purchase, Thermo says it will have about $3 billion in annual revenues from specialty diagnostics. Other instrumentation firms are making a similar push. In May, Agilent announced plans to acquire Dako, a Danish provider of cancer diagnostics, for $2.2 billion. Life Technologies, meanwhile, has joined the trend with the acquisition of Navigenics, a personalized genetic test company founded in 2006 by David B. Agus, a professor of medicine and engineering at the University of Southern California. Life Technologies calls the purchase its first step in building up a molecular diagnostics business through internal development, partnerships, and select acquisitions. Life Technologies is the only company today with the breadth of technology to span the continuum of diagnostic information, claims its CEO, Gregory T. Lucier. Navigenics’ informatics tools, he says, will allow the firm to transform data from its instruments “into actionable information and deliver it in real time to physicians around the world.”—MICHAEL MCCOY
Statistics. That rate was down from 8.9% in March 2011. According to Elizabeth McGaha, manager of the Department of Research & Member Insights in M&SA, this year’s salary and employment survey showed that 90% of ACS members were employed full-time as of March 1, 2012; 3.2% were part-time, and 2.6% were in postdoc positions. More than 7,000 ACS members completed the survey, which was conducted with domestic regular members younger than 70. No students, emeritus, retired, or international members were included. Median salaries in current dollars for ACS chemists employed full-time have declined somewhat for Ph.D. (1.9%) and M.S. (1.1%) degree holders, McGaha says. B.S. chemists saw a modest increase of 2.3% in their salaries. The percent of ACS chemists within academia rose to 35% in 2012 from 31% in 2011; the percent employed in industry is down for both manufacturing—44% in 2012 from 45% in 2011—and nonmanufacturing—20% compared with 22%. Overall, one-quarter of survey respondents expect their employment situation to be better by March 2013; 68% predict that their situation will be about the same.—RUDY BAUM
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