Xenogen: The CRO is just a bonus

Xenogen Corp. may have bought a CRO business with $10 million in revenues, but that wasn't the driver behind last week's deal. Instead, the acquisition will allow Xenogen to combine DNX Transgenic Sciences' technologies with its own.

DNX, which Xenogen acquired for 3.5 million shares of stock, is a preclinical CRO that offers transgenic mouse and rat production, homologous recombination in murine ES cells, blastocyst injection and a variety of transgenic and knock-out services. DNX (Cranbury, N.J.) is a subsidiary of MDS Inc. (MDZ; TSE:MDS, Toronto, Ontario), which will own about 20 percent of Xenogen following the transaction(see B5). ...