NEW YORK – Crown Bioscience said on Wednesday that it will acquire a business unit of Indivumed comprising the firm's curated biobank and associated global network.
As soon as the transaction closes — which is expected to take place in April 2023 — the business unit, dubbed IndivuServ, will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Crown Bioscience, a contract research organization owned by JSR Life Sciences. Indivumed, meanwhile, will hold onto its therapeutics business unit, dubbed IndivuType.
IndivuType will continue to work on translating the biospecimens — which it will still have access to via a multiyear collaboration with Crown Bioscience — into multiomics data to inform data- and artificial intelligence-driven personalized cancer drugs.
Crown, for its part, will acquire all of the laboratory operations associated with the IndivuServ business unit, including those in Hamburg, Germany, and Frederick, Maryland. The biobank at the center of the transaction includes nearly 1 million samples with associated clinical data as well as a network comprising more than 60 clinical divisions in the US, Europe, and Asia. Researchers in the network can access the biospecimens and blood samples in the biobank along with their associated clinical data.
Crown plans to use the biobank and network to expand on the services it offers as a CRO, including its biomarker development services, its patient-derived xenografts, its ex vivo patient tissues, and in vitro tumor organoid platforms.
"Now, we can focus on our data analytics-driven drug and diagnostic development while we also benefit from the enhanced strength of Crown Bioscience's R&D oncology offerings," Indivumed Founder and CEO Hartmut Juhl said in a statement. "With this partnership, Crown Bioscience and Indivumed create a powerhouse for the advancement of precision oncology."