History
In 1897, Marcel Mérieux, former assistant to Louis Pasteur, founded the Mérieux Biological Institute, which later became Institut Mérieux.[4] In 1963, Alain Mérieux founded BD Mérieux, of which he became majority shareholder in 1974. BD Mérieux would later become bioMérieux.[5] The company expanded its services and offerings through product development, acquisitions and partnerships:
Institut Mérieux, which belongs to the Mérieux family, is the main shareholder of bioMérieux. Jean-Luc Bélingard is President, and Alexandre Mérieux is General Director.[2] bioMérieux was listed on the stock exchange in 2004.[18]
Labrador Diagnostics filed a lawsuit against BioFire Diagnostics, a subsidiary of bioMérieux, for patent infringement on March 9, 2020.[19] On March 11, 2020, bioMérieux announced the finalization of their real-time PCR SARS-COV-2 R-GENE test. The company also announced the development of a fully automated test based on the BioFire FilmArray technology with the support of the United States Department of Defense. Lastly, bioMérieux launched development on an expanded version of its BioFire FilmArray Respiratory Panel 2. The new version included SARS-CoV-2 in addition to the 21 other common respiratory pathogens and delivered results in approximately 45 minutes.[20][21][22] After this announcement, Labrador issued a statement claiming that when it filed the lawsuit against BioFire it had no idea BioFire was developing COVID-19 testing kits.[23][24] Fortress Investment Group, parent company to Labrador, offered to grant both the defendants and anyone else a royalty-free license for its technology for use in COVID-19 tests.[23] bioMérieux and BioFire declined Labrador's offer.[19]
In June 2021, bioMérieux launched EPISEQ SARS-COV-2, a cloud-based software application for the epidemiological surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 variants. The application identifies variants based on international nomenclatures, including any new variant of concern (VOC), and is compatible with three major sequencing platforms (Illumina, Inc., Oxford Nanopore Technologies, Thermo Fisher Scientific).[25]
- Api Systems, acquired in 1987[6]
- Vitek Systems, acquired in 1988[6]
- Organon Teknika, acquired in 2001 from Akzo Nobel[7]
- Bacterial Barcodes, acquired in 2006[8]
- Biomedics (Spain) and BTF (Australia), acquired in 2007[9]
- AB Biodisk (Sweden), AviaraDx (bioTheragnostics today) (USA) and PML Microbiologicals (USA), acquired in 2008[10]
