Inverness continues spree, buys Matritech

One more stop on the Inverness Medical Innovations shopping spree. The company has agreed to buy the assets of Matritech, a biotech company focused on point-of-care diagnostic tests, for $36 million. Matritech's leading product, a test that can help diagnose and monitor bladder cancer, will add to Inverness's stable of rapid diagnostics.

This buyout follows rapidly on another acquisition: Just two weeks ago, Inverness announced an all-stock deal to buy Hemosense, another point-of-care diagnostics company. Hemosense sells handheld blood-coagulation systems for monitoring patients taking warfarin. And the Hemosense deal came on the heels of two other acquisitions, of Biosite (a proteomics company whose BNP blood test is used in to detect heart failure, in a $1.7 billion deal) and QAS (a maker of coagulation monitors). In all, the company has now bought or agreed to buy eight companies in just over 18 months.

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