Biotechnology company BioTime, Inc. (BTX) on Friday said it have signed a definitive agreement, under which its wholly owned subsidiary LifeMap Sciences will acquire privately held company XenneX, Inc. The acquisition is expected to close within thirty days.
David Warshawsky, LifeMap Chief Executive Officer, founded XenneX in 2003 and also serves as its Chairman.
The company noted that XenneX stockholders will receive about 1.36 million shares of LifeMap stock, which will represent approximately 13% of the LifeMap stock upon the closing of the transaction. XenneX shareholders will also receive approximately 448,430 BioTime shares as part of the transaction.
In the deal, XenneX will be merged into LifeMap Sciences, which is developing a discovery platform, including a web-based database, to aid researchers in the use of stem cells in the emerging field of regenerative medicine.
XenneX holds the exclusive, worldwide licenses to market GeneCards, a searchable, integrated, database of human genes, and PanDaTox, a recently developed, searchable, database that can be used to identify genes and intergenic regions that are unclonable in E. coli, to aid in the discovery of new antibiotics.
Warshawsky stated, "LifeMap has made great progress with the LifeMap database and discovery platform, and we see GeneCards, MalaCards and PanDaTox as a perfect fit for making LifeMap the leading source of online database research tools for genetic, biological, and stem cell research and development."
Separately, LifeMap Sciences announced that it anticipates acquiring a license from Yeda to market the new MalaCards database of human diseases.
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