ADTBio acquired by Swedish life sciences company

Dr Tom Brown Jnr during the announcement event at the Oxford Science Park

Biotech company ATDBio, founded by Professor Tom Brown and Dr Dorcas Brown has been acquired by Swedish life sciences company Biotage AB for approximately £45m in cash and shares.

ATDBio was created in 2004 in response to a need for high quality synthetic DNA and RNA for research and biomedical applications by Professor Tom Brown, a leading nucleic acid chemist, and Dr Dorcas Brown, an expert in oligonucleotide synthesis. More recently Dr Tom Brown (Jnr), Dr Asha Brown and Dr Jo Sobek-Brown joined the company to establish new laboratories in the Oxford Science Park. They are all Oxford Chemistry graduates and former DPhil students.

The company has laboratories in Oxford and Southampton and works with its customers to develop simple, rapid and accurate human diagnostic methods.  In 2020 it expanded to meet the demands of the pandemic response – increasing its synthesis capacity by more than ten times to make oligonucleotides for millions of COVID-19 tests.

The acquisition of the company by Biotage will allow accelerated expansion of its activities, as well as providing Biotage with expertise in highly complex DNA and RNA production.  All ATDBio's staff will join the Biotage Group as part of the acquisition and Professor Tom Brown will act as a consultant. They will continue to work with existing and new customers on molecular diagnostics, nucleic acid-based therapeutics and vaccines as well as new generation DNA and RNA sequencing technologies.

Read more at www.biotage.com/