PerkinElmer, Inc., Waltham, Mass., has entered into an agreement to acquire San Diego-based BioLegend, a global provider of life science antibodies and reagents, for approximately $5.25 billion in a combination of cash and stock, subject to certain adjustments.

BioLegend provides its academic and biopharmaceutical customers with antibodies and reagents in high-growth areas such as cytometry, proteogenomics, multiplex assays, recombinant proteins, magnetic cell separation, and bioprocessing. The transaction will be the largest in PerkinElmer’s history and is expected to close by the end of the 2021 calendar year, subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions.

Privately held BioLegend has more than 700 employees based primarily in the United States, with estimated 2022 revenues of $380 million. Upon joining PerkinElmer, BioLegend will expand PerkinElmer’s existing life science franchise into new segments, and its state-of-the-art campus in San Diego, Calif., will become PerkinElmer’s global Center of Excellence (CoE) for research reagent content development for the combined company.

“We are thrilled to have the opportunity to bring our technologies and innovative cultures together to create seamless solutions to push science and discovery forward,” says Prahlad Singh, president and chief executive officer of PerkinElmer. “We believe joining our teams presents an incredible opportunity to accelerate discoveries that help life science researchers leverage ever-developing technologies and novel approaches to better understand and fight disease.”

Gene Lay, founder, president, and chief executive officer of BioLegend, adds, “We are very excited to join the PerkinElmer family. The combination will afford us the opportunity to continue to build on our two-decade foundation of innovative science and scale in new and highly attractive PerkinElmer areas such as clinical diagnostics and food safety testing. The BioLegend team is eager to enter this new chapter with PerkinElmer, furthering our mission of enabling legendary discovery from research to cure.”