Gen-Probe Spins Off New Company, Roka Bioscience, For Industrial Testing

[Updated 9/15/09 8:15 am. See below.]San Diego-based Gen-Probe (NASDAQ: [[ticker: GPRO]]) says it is spinning off its industrial testing business into an independent company, called Roka Bioscience, that is developing real-time molecular tests for biopharmaceutical, food, and water safety testing.

Gen-Probe plans to initially own 19.9 percent of the new company. Affiliates of three private equity firms, OrbiMed Advisors, TPG (TPG Biotechnology), and New Enterprise Associates have agreed to provide $37.2 million to complete development of several industrial-scale molecular assays. Gen-Probe says 18 of its employees with expertise in industrial testing have joined Roka, which begins operating immediately as an independent company.

A Gen-Probe spokesman says the new company initially will operate out of Gen-Probe’s headquarters, and will be based in San Diego. [Updated to include information that was not immediately available from the company.]

Gen-Probe says it also is contributing industrial assets that include its Closed Unit Dose Assay (CUDA) system, a portable testing instrument that can deliver highly accurate molecular results in roughly an hour. Roka also will have rights to develop tests for new markets, including veterinary, environmental, and bioterrorism testing. Gen-Probe says it also is transferring its partnership agreements with Millipore Corp. of Billerica, MA, and GE Water (a business unit of CT-based General Electric).

Roka’s CEO is Paul G. Thomas, who was most recently chairman and CEO of LifeCell, a regenerative medicine company sold last year to Kinetic Concepts for $1.8 billion. In a statement, Gen-Probe CEO Carl Hull says, “We believe establishing a highly focused, standalone company is the best way to maximize the considerable long-term potential of our molecular technologies in industrial markets.”

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.