PerkinElmer Acquires China-based Infectious Disease Diagnostics Company

PerkinElmer

, a global leader focused on the health and safety of people and the environment, announced today that it has completed the acquisition of Shanghai Haoyuan Biotech Co., Ltd., a China-based infectious disease diagnostics company. The acquisition extends PerkinElmer's capabilities into nucleic acid blood screening and in the growing molecular clinical diagnostics market in China, further strengthening the Company's position as a diagnostics leader in China as well as across the globe. Haoyuan, a supplier of molecular infectious disease screening technologies for blood bank and clinical laboratory settings throughout China, extends PerkinElmer's portfolio by adding four infectious disease assays that are approved by China's State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA). These infectious disease diagnostics tools include a qualitative 3-in-1 assay for the detection of hepatitis B (HBV), hepatitis C (HCV), and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), two clinical quantitative assays that screen for HBV and HCV, and one qualitative assay screen for chlamydia trachomatis and neisseria gonorrhoeae (CTNG). “By combining PerkinElmer's robust disease screening capabilities with Haoyuan's proprietary reagents and equipment, the Company will be able to offer highly sensitive systems and assays for quality detection of blood-borne infections for the Chinese market,” said Robert Friel, chairman and chief executive officer of PerkinElmer. “Integrating Haoyuan's screening products with PerkinElmer's diagnostics capabilities will help to further advance the health of the Chinese people by offering leading technology that ensures accurate diagnosis of infectious diseases at a low cost.” Facing an annual 15% increase in the demand for blood, the Chinese government is now mandating and funding infectious disease screening of donated blood. The Chinese government's latest 5-year plan mandates that all blood be tested using nucleic acid technologies by the end of 2015. Compared to antibody testing methods, nucleic acid testing reduces the potential for failed detection of certain infection diseases that exhibit long incubation times between infection and detection. There are approximately 780,000 people living with HIV/AIDS in China. The World Health Organization also reports chronic infection rates of 8% to 10% of the adult population with HBV and 3.2 % of China's 1.4 billion population living with HCV.