Mergers Acquisitions Consolidation-Microarray Industry bubble in making- The days are numbered

Bioinformatics promise has already had its brush with plenty of resistance, not it seems the time for microarray industry with consolidation and acqusitions and megers announced almost every week. The slow adoption and too many fragmented with disparate standards has made the industry a victim of its own success.

the new kid on the block to unload its microarray and genomics business include Nanogen with its plans to unload its loss making microarray business, While the most of the biotech IPO featured in the market in the last 6 month in US have failed to generate expected results.

But pharmaceutical firms are racing to buy up biotech firms Roche has acquired 454 Life science,and Nimblegen and now Bristol-Myers Squibb is buying Adnexus Therapeutics for $430 million. Wyeth has bought Haptogen Ltd, which emerged from Aberdeen University five years ago, pharmaceutical firm Wyeth is the fourth largest biotechnology company in the world. PerkinElmer is planning to buy the cord blood banking firm Viacell Inc

On the the report of Bradstreet Israel warning on Sunday that majority of Israel’s publicly-traded biotechnology companies will be forced to halt their research and development activities in as little as two-and-a-half years if they do not alter their business strategies immediately, research company Dun & In many cases, biotech companies are not doing sales, but only conducting research programs,” said Reuven Kuvent, director-general of D&B Israel. “They don’t focus enough on raising capital or attracting investor things they must do if they intend to continue to be operational over the next few years.”

While Asian genomics and biotech companies like Biocon which recently sold its enzu=yem business to NovoZyme and Strand Genomics which was selected as TECHNOLOGY PIONEERS 2007 by World Ecconomic Forum and smaller startups like Ocimum Biosolutions which are now pumping vast amount of funds into acquiring genomics business across US and Europe are waiting inthe wings to take off . Still there are others racing to create the cheapest microarray and sequencing methods only time will tell theeir fate,