Canon Launches Biomedical Subsidiary To Develop Tech For Diagnostics, Research
Canon U.S.A. has announced the formation of a new wholly owned subsidiary, Canon BioMedical. The new business unit will assume responsibility for all development, manufacturing, and marketing activities related to Canon’s life science and molecular diagnostics platform. It will also target new untapped areas for growth and innovation in medical analysis.
Canon BioMedical will be headquartered in Melville, NY, and Akiko Tanaka, former VP of Canon U.S. Life Sciences, will serve as president and CEO. The company will develop new products from research to commercialization and look for areas where Canon technology might gain a broader foothold in the medical field, according to a Canon press release.
“We look forward to bringing Canon technology to clinicians and scientists all over the world in an effort to assist in improving human health and in advancing science,” said Joe Adachi, chairman and CEO of Canon U.S.A., in the press release.
Canon BioMedical will oversee projects currently managed by Canon U.S. Life Sciences. Brian McNally, a senior marketing specialist at Canon, told GenomeWeb that among the Canon Life Sciences projects moving to Canon BioMedical is the MDx platform, which has been in development since 2006.
MDx is a genetic testing platform that combines microfluidics technology licensed from Caliper Life Sciences with innovations in Canon’s imaging and printing products. Last October, a research team from the University of Utah published study in Clinical Chemistry that demonstrated proof-of-principle of an MDx prototype.
“Generally we are going to try and pair a robust research use only (RUO) assay menu with it … mostly focused on variant detection for inherited diseases,” McNally told GenomeWeb. “We’ll …show people different applications that they could work on, but it is also open to [developing] your own assay. That’s one of the reasons we want to launch it in the RUO space — we want people to play with it and develop on it.”
McNally also mentioned the joint venture Canon Life Sciences formed with T2 Biosystems last month, and said that the terms of the deal would transfer to Canon BioMedical. The two companies are collaborating on a new test panel capable of rapidly diagnosing Lyme Disease, a bacterial infection spread by ticks.
“Canon U.S. Life Sciences is dedicated to developing innovative new diagnostic solutions that improve human health,” Tanaka said last month. “We believe combining our collective expertise with T2 Biosystems’ proprietary T2MR platform may enable us to develop a fully differentiated diagnostic panel for the detection of Lyme disease, an area of critical need where delays in providing appropriate treatment to patients can result in significant morbidity and unnecessary costs.”
Canon isn’t the only camera and optics company to make a move in the medical space recently. Last week, Nikon announced the acquisition of Optos, a British retinal imaging firm, in a deal worth $400 million.