Johnson & Johnson Nordic AB, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson has acquired Amic, a privately held Swedish developer of in vitro diagnostic (IVD) technologies for use in point-of-care (POC) and near-patient settings (outside the physical facilities of the clinical laboratory). The acquisition will provide Ortho-Clinical Diagnostics Inc., a Johnson & Johnson company, with access to a high performance technology platform.
The technology is in development in the rapidly growing area of diagnostics, and will complement Ortho's clinical laboratory, immunohematology and donor screening businesses. As a result of the acquisition, Johnson & Johnson expects to incur an estimated one-time after-tax charge of approximately US$40 million during the second quarter of 2008 related to the expensing of in-process R&D. Other terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Amic is developing technology that uses a chip-based micro-fluidic platform to enable fully quantitative, immunoassay tests in POC or near-patient settings. This technology represents an advance in an area of diagnostics where double-digit market growth is anticipated.
