Bio-Techne – Acquisitions, Partnerships & Expanded Businesses

How did Bio-Techne enhance its diagnostic and genomic segment via the USD 250m acquisition of Asuragen in April 2021? It added a portfolio of leading genetic carrier screening and oncology research products, as well as diagnostic kits and a very experienced leadership team.

Bio-Techne announced its planned acquisition of B-MoGen Biotechnologies in June 2019. B-MoGen’s technology solves the most complex gene-editing problems. It has proprietary cutting-edge gene editing and delivery tools clearly enabling and accelerating growth in immunotherapy treatments. This technology can potentially deliver personalised therapeutics with greater target effect and less off-target side effects vs a company such as BioLegend. What are your thoughts on this acquisition, given you are a former Board Member with B-MoGen?

You mentioned the Catamaran collaboration and what you referred to as the CAR-NK cell manufacturing technologies. You also outlined Bio-Techne’s USD 50m scaling of the state-of-the-art gene production facility. The TcBuster is a key component of the company’s cell and gene therapy workflow solutions. You mentioned transposon, which is the novel non-viral transposon-based gene delivery system. In Q3 FY21 Bio-Techne signed a licence agreement with Luminary Therapeutics to use the TcBuster in the development of a BAFF- CAR-T therapeutic. What are your thoughts on the TcBuster and how Bio-Techne is gaining traction with customers developing cell and gene therapies with a growing funnel of biopharma companies?

Bio-Techne posted organic growth in its protein sciences segment of 24% YoY in Q3 FY21, while revenue was up over 90% globally in Q3 for the Simple Plex, its automated multiplex immunoassay solution in the proteomic analytical tool portion of protein sciences. What are your thoughts on Simple Plex’s ability to deliver high-quality and reproducible data, especially with sub-picogram level sensitivity? It mentioned a 4+ log dynamic range and this comes in a smaller footprint that’s comparatively less expensive. How does the Simple Plex position Bio-Techne?

The Simple Western is part of the ProteinSimple brand. As you mentioned automation is very important, it’s the only sample-to-answer fully automated solution for protein identification and quantification. How important are the 1,300 antibodies certified on Simple Western? How does that compare? It’s hard to frame the competitive landscape, since this is the only one that’s fully automated and therefore wins hands down.

Bio-Techne continues to invest in the Simple Western franchise. The Abby is its lower-cost platform with a similar picogram level sensitivity and can perform sequential chemiluminescence assays within the same capillary. What are your thoughts on the Abby? Could we also discuss the Ella, which is more tied to the Simple Plex? Could you comment on the ExoDX for prostate cancer? There is also the RNAscope that we haven’t hit on and the licence agreement with Xencor and what it’s doing with the antibody business.

The antibody business is one of Bio-Techne’s big strengths. It just posted over 50% growth in Q3 FY21 and it has 6,000-plus proteins and approximately 450,000 antibody variations and that catalogue can be leveraged as a platform to engineer potential therapeutic applications. Xencor just inked a licensing agreement with Bio- Techne. It hopes to develop engineered monoclonal antibodies and cytokines for the treatment of cancer and autoimmune diseases. It’s considering a third proprietary Bio-Techne antibody. Does Google’s AlphaFold somewhat marginalise that catalogue because now you don’t need to go to them and try to use their catalogue in terms of licence agreements for potential therapeutic applications?

The accelerating innovation tied to computational biology is breath-taking. Ginkgo Bioworks obviously comes straight to mind around synthetic biology. Do you have any closing thoughts?