GE Healthcare Acquires Clarient, a Leader in Molecular Diagnostics

GE Healthcare (Chalfont St Giles, UK), a unit of General Electric Company, has acquired Clarient (Aliso Viejo, CA, USA), a leader in the fast-growing molecular diagnostics industry, in a stock deal valued at US$580 million. The acquisition of Clarient represents a major advance in how GE Healthcare will assess and treat cancer.

The combination of GE's in vivo imaging with Clarient's molecular diagnostics will give GE Healthcare precision diagnostics, which means more accurate diagnosis, more targeted treatments, and reduced healthcare costs–all adding up to better patient management.

With the Clarient purchase, GE will pursue molecular diagnostics as it relates directly to cancer patient diagnosis, monitoring, and therapy adjustment. Pascale Witz, president and CEO of Medical Diagnostics at GE Healthcare commented, "Where we used to define cancer by geography (breast cancer, lung cancer, et cetera), we now define it by its molecular profile. So it really depends on the molecular fingerprint of the tumor to decide which type of therapy the patient will be given. It also defines the prognosis for the patient.” And as therapies become more and more complex and patient-specific, she said, it becomes more and more important to "understand this cancer fingerprint to create better diagnostics that will help in making these therapeutic decisions.”

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