BioLegend acquires Covance Antibody Products
Top of the antibody news last week was BioLegend’s decision to acquire a division of Covance, and our data from CiteAb suggests that this is a strong step for the company towards increasing its product offering.
The acquisition is specifically of Massachusetts-based division ‘Covance Antibody Products’ and includes a research and development unit, and an antibody and research reagent manufacturing unit.
Here at CiteAb we have a database containing over 2 million antibodies from suppliers all over the world, and we use academic research citations to rank them. Our analysis of these hundreds of thousands of publications which use research antibodies gives an unrivalled view of trends among over 70 suppliers in the market.
From this we can clearly see that BioLegend and Covance are a good fit, and that Covance will strengthen BioLegend’s market share in a number of ways.
BioLegend focuses on mouse and rat monoclonal antibodies, while Covance focus on mouse monoclonals but also on rabbit polyclonals. This brings BioLegend into a new market and with rabbit polyclonal antibodies accounting for 42% of citations according to CiteAb data, this is a significant market to enter.
BioLegend focuses on research in immunology and cardiovascular disease, so bringing in stem cell and neuroscience focused Covance creates strength for BioLegend in new research areas.
Both BioLegend and Covance have strong reach into international markets, and both are strong in the USA. BioLegend will undoubtedly be looking to expand some Covance products into its already established Japanese and Australian markets, and the strength of Covance in the UK and Germany will boost BioLegend’s reach in Europe.
Interestingly this acquisition is unlikely to boost BioLegend’s reach in China, where neither company has made significant inroads. We’re interested to see whether this is a future move for BioLegend, as growth in the Chinese market is likely to be a target for the company.
All in all, our data suggests this is a measured step forward for BioLegend, one we might see repeated if the company has future ambitions in the Asian market.
– Andrew and the CiteAb team
