Green light for GeneWeave

Roche is buying GeneWeave Biosciences Inc. to beef up the diagnostics side of its infectious disease initiative with a platform to identify bacteria - and antibiotics effective against them - in time to guide treatment decisions. The biotech's Smarticles technology identifies bacteria by making the suspect species or family express a light-producing protein, then reveals susceptibility when an antibiotic dims the glow.

Roche Molecular Diagnostics Head Paul Brown said the deal is the latest the company has done to bring in technologies to tackle the problem of antimicrobial resistance...