Agilent Technologies, a Santa Clara, Calif.-based scientific instrument manufacturer, has acquired instrument manufacturer and CRO Biocius Life Sciences for an undisclosed amount.

Biocius, based in Wakefield, Mass., is the developer of the RapidFire drug-screening platform: a high-throughput, automated sample processing system the company claims is up to 100 times more effective than conventional mass spectrometry (MS) screening methods, according to inPharma-Technologist.

The RapidFire platform is designed to allow researchers to better understand a drug's biochemical properties. Agilent believes RapidFire, coupled with its own TOF, Q-TOF and triple quadrupole LC/MS systems offers potential clients an “unrivalled MS drug screening solution.”

“With this technology and the team that developed it now part of Agilent, we can expand our reach in the pharmaceutical and clinical mass spectrometry markets,” said Gustavo Salem, vice president of Agilent's biological systems division within the company's life sciences group. “Agilent's breadth of global resources and market strategy are the best fit for Biocius to drive RapidFire into new markets going forward.”

All 25 Biocius employees will join Agilent.

In a statement released shortly after striking the deal, Biocius' former chairman and CEO, Jeffrey Leathe, said: “RapidFire instrumentation and research services are highly valued by our leading drug discovery researchers around the globe.

“As we continued to leverage those relationships and our experience into current and new markets, the natural evolution of the company was to partner with a world-class organization to accelerate our application development and further market penetration.”

This is Agilent's second acquisition in the last week. Monday it announced it had acquired Edinburgh, U.K.-based electrophoresis specialists Lab901.

Lab 901, with 45 employees, manufactures products for DNA, RNA and protein research, including its flagship ScreenTape System.