Roche purchased a majority stake in Foundation Medicine today... any thoughts on whether this is good for Caris since it indicates pharma interest in the molecular testing industry?
San Diego, San Francisco, and Dallas, January 12, 2014 Riots broke out this morning and security was ramped up in the parking lots of Ambry Genetics, Pathway Genomics, Invitae, and Caris Life Sciences, as Maserati dealers, yacht designers, and real estate agents descended on the four targeted sequencing laboratories, each among next most likely to cash out during the upcoming feeding frenzy. After reading about Roche’s billion-dollar check to Foundation, the shrewdest purveyors of ultra-luxury goods rented tents and dispatched their top salesmen to the four parking lots, each hoping to be first out of the gate. The west coast Net-Jets rep, Cassandra Nostradamus, captured the mood succinctly: “Do you think Sanofi and Lily and Merck and Astra-Zeneca are going to sit back and do nothing? Not a chance – they’ll all want what Roche and Novartis have – we’ll look back on this deal in a year and say Roche was smart and bought first when it was cheap.” An opposing view was offered by Tiresias B. Criswell, the Head of Life Sciences Sales for Tesla Motors – “Yeah, right” sayeth Tiresias “maybe that’s what we’ll be saying in the midst of the sheep-rush a year from now. But then in five years we’ll be saying that targeted oncology sequencing is like Hollywood – a great place to be a paid employee, but a crummy place to have to mind the cash register.” The sounds of Julia Lee’s 1949 Jazz classic “Snatch and Grab It” were heard wafting through the air as your correspondent was elbowed out of the way by a Monolo Blahnik fitter on steroids.
