Nightingale introduces combination of its proprietary blood test and genomics: acquires Finnish genetic testing company Negen and launches international centre of excellence for genomic data analysis
Company release, Inside information
18 January 2022 at 9:20 a.m. (EET)
Nightingale Health Plc (“Nightingale”) announces today that the company will take a major step towards its mission of empowering people to make the best decisions for their own health by combining Nightingale’s proprietary blood test with genomics. This expansion is accelerated by acquiring a Finnish genetic testing company Negen Ltd. (“Negen”) and launching an international excellence centre focusing on genetic data analysis. The first products integrating Nightingale’s proprietary blood test and genomic data will launch in the second half of 2022. The transaction is estimated to have positive impact on Nightingale’s revenue in the long term.
Nightingale expands to genomics
Nightingale’s preventative health platform is currently based on the company’s proprietary test that measures over 200 metabolites from a single blood sample. This blood test is only available from Nightingale and can be done from a single small blood sample taken by a professional, or from a finger prick at home. It has received regulatory approvals allowing its use in healthcare settings in Europe and Japan, has been validated by more than 300 peer-reviewed scientific studies from around the world, and has been deployed in the world’s largest biobank collections.
Nightingale’s proprietary algorithms link blood test measurements from hundreds of thousands of research participants to health outcomes, based on the world’s largest health outcome data assets. Nightingale’s blood test is differentiated by its unique ability to detect the dynamic health state, i.e. how an individual’s life to date contributes to future health outcomes, and how the likelihood of those outcomes changes in response to lifestyle changes. This means that multiple tests, made especially easy by Nightingale’s home testing kit, can track an individual’s progress over time and help them keep to their own health goals. Nightingale’s blood test alone allows, on average, two times better early warning of common lifestyle diseases than standard blood tests currently used in global healthcare, at a more affordable price point. Improving early detection of lifestyle diseases in routine blood testing has the potential to lower healthcare costs and improve quality of life.
Nightingale is continuously improving its technological capabilities to quantify each person’s health risks. The natural next step to build on its preventative health platform, as introduced today, is to combine Nightingale’s proprietary blood test with the power of genetic data. These two complementary data modalities have previously been explored in a unique collaboration with Nightingale, published in the leading scientific journal, Nature, in 2019. Now, for the first time, individual risk for a wide range of diseases can be predicted by both the dynamic molecular state of the body, as well as information gleaned from the genome sequence a person inherits from their parents. This combination creates a ground-breaking capability for actionable early disease risk detection.
“There are companies offering genetic testing and there are companies providing blood tests. We are integrating the two in an unprecedented way in to a simple and actionable preventative health analysis. We capture the lifestyle factors with our proprietary blood test more holistically than other blood tests and we can rapidly match other consumer genetic testing companies through the Negen acquisition and our own excellence centre. No other company in the world can match this combination,” says Teemu Suna, Nightingale’s Chief Executive Officer and founder.
“While genetic data alone can help understand the individual risk of a range of diseases, it captures only a small fraction of overall risk, and it does not change over time. This can lead to a de-motivating message: nothing can be done about what our genes say is our destiny. I see the true opportunity in combining that information with the dynamic blood measurements by Nightingale’s technology. This puts us in a position to use more complete information to help people understand and improve their health,” says Dr. Jeffrey Barrett, Nightingale’s Chief Scientific Officer.
Nightingale will expand to genetics in two ways: by acquiring genetic testing company Negen and launching an internal excellence centre in genetic data analysis with a team of leading international genome scientists.
With the acquisition of Negen, Nightingale acquires the core functionality in direct-to-consumer DNA testing, genomic data processing pipeline and polygenic risk algorithms for, among others, cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. The excellence centre will develop machine learning and artificial intelligence tools to further develop and expand Nightingale’s integrated preventative health products. Dr. Jeffrey Barrett, Nightingale’s Chief Scientific Officer, and a world-renowned expert in genomics, will lead this initiative.
“With the acquisition and the new excellence centre, we can bring the advantages of genomic data to Nightingale’s preventative health products in the second half of 2022. We see this as part of our long-term commitment to creating a holistic disease prediction and leading preventative healthcare company. We need to bring as many technologies as possible out of research laboratories and into people’s hands to understand their health, and enable them to take action,” says Barrett.
Briefly about Negen and key terms for the acquisition
Negen is a Finnish genetic testing and analysis technology company founded in 2015. Negen provides its proprietary genetic tests directly to consumers and via its healthcare partners. With Negen’s genetic tests, consumers can find out their genetic risk for several diseases and health conditions, including type 2 diabetes and coronary heart disease.
Negen is an early-stage technology company that is in the very beginning of commercialisation. The company has, however, established partnerships with several private healthcare providers in Finland, which further validates the acquired technology.
In the acquisition, Nightingale purchases all shares of Negen. One of Negen’s founders will continue to work after the transaction to support the integration of Negen’s technology into Nightingale’s offering.
Negen’s revenue prior to the transaction has been around 50,000–150,000 euros annually. At the time of signing the share purchase agreement, Negen’s cash funds were approximately 5,000 euros, total liabilities approximately 100,000 euros and annual operative cost level approximately EUR 100,000.
The transaction is conditional on Negen’s certain partner agreeing to new terms regarding future collaboration between Negen and the partner. The transaction is also conditional to certain other customary terms and preconditions.
The transaction is expected to be completed, subject to the fulfilment of the conditions precedent, during January 2022. The agreed purchase price is paid in cash and it is not significant in terms of Nightingale’s cash position.
Combining Nightingale’s proprietary blood test and genomic data provides ground-breaking possibilities to improve early disease risk detection and accelerate preventative medicine. Because Nightingale’s proprietary blood test offers an actionable link to health outcomes, it is possible in the future to combine also other data assets beyond genomics to increase the competitive advantage of Nightingale’s products even further.
“It’s a truly major step in our mission to combine genetics into our preventative health platform. In the future, we expect to integrate even more data sets to our platform and we strongly believe there are novel opportunities in biotechnology but also in digital health and wearables. We are in a unique position as Nightingale’s platform can operate as an engine for various health data sets to improve actionability or connection to health outcomes, and with this, help people across the world to live healthier lives,” says Suna.
For further information, please contact:
Teemu Suna, CEO
ir@nightingalehealth.com
Certified Advisor:
Oaklins Merasco Ltd, tel. +358 9 6129 670
About Nightingale
Nightingale Health is a health technology company transforming preventive care. We envisage a world that focuses on keeping people healthy rather than just treating illnesses. Our wide-ranging disease risk predictions consist of two interconnected factors: Our proprietary blood analysis technology and a large amount of data on health events. We help people make better personal health decisions and connect the health industry to offer their services for individuals’ preventative needs. By empowering the world with comprehensive health insights, we accelerate scientific discoveries, industry developments and improve personal health for everyone.
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