Brooks Automation (NASDAQ: [[ticker:BRKS]]), the biomedical equipment maker in Chelmsford, MA, says today it paid $79 million to acquire Nexus Biosystems, a suburban San Diego provider of compound sample management systems.
Based in Poway, CA, about 19 miles north of San Diego, Nexus makes automated equipment for handling chemical and biological samples in a variety of conditions and temperatures that is used worldwide in pharmaceutical, biotech, agrichemical, forensic, and research institutions. In addition to $79 million in cash, Brooks said it paid an additional $6.7 million for unrestricted cash that Nexus held at the closing.
Nexus Founder John Lillig, who started the company in 2005, was previously the chief technology officer at Discovery Partners International, a San Diego drug development company that merged in 2006 with Cambridge, MA-based Infinity Pharmaceuticals.
In a statement from Brooks, CEO Steve Schwartz says Nexus represents “an important next step” that will be combined with Brooks’ recent acquisition of RTS Life Sciences to extend its reach in the life sciences.
Author: Bruce V. Bigelow
In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here.
Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.
Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.
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