Friday, August 04, 2023

Apton (Super) Resolution to Be Acquired Fulfilled by PacBio

Wednesday night brought the news that Pacific Biosciences has both officially launched their Onso desktop short read sequencer and bought technology for a high throughput version of it by acquiring Apton Biosystems.  Apton had been developing their own short read chemistry and an instrument based on super0resolution imaging to go with it and was apparently relatively close to launch.  PacBio got Apton for $110M, with $85 paid now in PacBio stock and the remaining $25M "stock and cash add-ons" according to GenomeWeb (premium/free via ex-Twitter) - so presumable based on certain milestones being met.