Biotechnology Acquisitions in Illinois

Ampersand Capital Partners, a healthcare-focused private equity firm, has acquired Biologos LLC, a Glendale Heights, Illinois-based manufacturer of custom and standard cell culture media, reagents, buffers, enzymes, and sera. Ampersand will invest to expand Biologos' capabilities, product offerings, and geographic reach, and has appointed Frank Witney as Chairman with two Ampersand principals joining the board.

Charles River Laboratories acquired the remaining 80% stake in SAMDI Tech for $50 million in cash, completing a transaction that follows a partnership begun in 2018. The acquisition integrates SAMDI Tech's proprietary mass spectrometry high-throughput screening technology into Charles River's Discovery and Safety Assessment segment to strengthen drug discovery capabilities and accelerate hit identification for pharmaceutical and biotech clients.

Cardio Diagnostics Holdings, Inc., a precision cardiovascular diagnostics company using epigenetics and AI, completed a business combination with special purpose acquisition company Mana Capital Acquisition Corp. The combined company began trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbols CDIO and CDIOW, providing Cardio with public-market access and capital to commercialize its epigenetics-based cardiovascular tests.

Cyrus Biotechnology completed an acquisition of Orthogonal Biologics and closed an $18 million Series B financing to build an integrated software-and-screening pre-clinical biologics discovery firm. The financing was led by a syndicate including OrbiMed Advisors, Trinity Ventures, Agent Capital and other investors, with Selecta Bioscience joining as a strategic investor; the acquisition brings Orthogonal’s deep mutational scanning protein engineering capabilities into Cyrus’s computational discovery platform.

Transnetyx, a Memphis-area provider of automated genotyping and research support services, has acquired BrainBits, a Springfield, Illinois supplier of fresh, micro-dissected rodent brain and other tissues. The acquisition expands Transnetyx's product and tissue-service offerings for university, hospital and bioscience researchers and brings BrainBits operations into the Transnetyx Tissue brand.

Novo Holdings A/S made a $72 million Series E growth equity investment in LanzaTech to support expansion and commercialization of the company's carbon-recycling fuels and chemicals platform. Anders Bendsen Spohr of Novo Holdings will join LanzaTech's board as the investment aims to accelerate deployment of LanzaTech's sustainable fuels, chemicals and polyethylene produced from recycled carbon.