Immucor Acquires Sirona Genomics

Ropes & Gray represented Immucor, Inc., a leader in transfusion and transplantation diagnostics, in its acquisition of Mountain View, Calif.-based Sirona Genomics, announced March 4. Sirona was spun out of the Stanford Genome Technology Center at Stanford University, with a focus on developing next-generation sequencing typing applications specifically for the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) system.

Under the terms of the October 2014 agreement between the companies that Ropes & Gray also advised on, Immucor retained the option to acquire Sirona, which focuses on the development and commercialization of the MIA FORA NGS offering for high resolution HLA typing. MIA FORA NGS consists of an easy-to-use sample preparation protocol with a proprietary bioinformatics solution. It was launched in December 2015 and is available research use only (RUO) in the U.S. and other countries and received CE Mark approval in February 2016.

The Ropes & Gray team included private equity partner Neill Jakobe (Chicago); finance partner Alexander Zeltser (New York); tax partners Pamela Glazier and Aaron Harsh (both of Boston); and executive compensation & employee benefits partner Loretta Richard (Boston).