Celera (Rockville, Maryland), a business of Applera (Norwalk, Connecticut), has reported an agreement to purchase cardiovascular healthcare company Berkeley Heart Lab (BHL; Alameda, California) for $195 million in cash — a sign that Celera’s impending transition into an independent publicly traded company could be on the horizon.

However, during a Tuesday conference call to discuss the BHL acquisition, Celera’s parent company played it close to the vest when peppered with questions regarding a possible timeline for the split-off.

“I don’t think we’ve given any public information on when [the split] is going to be, but I hope it’s not long,” Tony White, president/CEO of Applera said, during the call. “Morgan Stanley has been working on this very diligently.”

Nearly a month ago, Applera made med-tech headlines when it reported hiring Morgan Stanley to explore alternatives to its current stock structure, including splitting into two independent publicly traded companies. The company said it was time to explore the potential benefits of Applied Biosystems (Foster City, California), another Applera unit, and Celera going their separate ways.

Commenting a bit further, White said that the BHL acquisition was “certainly in the hopper” at the time of last month’s announcement.

The acquisition of BHL is expected to close in 2Q08, with BHL then operating as a business of Celera.

Celera said BHL will give it entry to the estimated $7.8 billion U.S. market for “personalized” cardiovascular disease treatment.

“This acquisition provides Celera with a commercial infrastructure to drive adoption of many of its emerging new molecular diagnostic tests that predict risk and individualize treatment in cardiovascular disease,” said Kathy Ordo ez, president of Celera. “Berkeley HeartLab has an outstanding medical and scientific reputation, and a strong track record of growth, by providing testing and other services to improve clinical outcomes for patients with cardiovascular disease.

“Celera’s genetic markers that are intended to identify people at risk for early heart attacks, stroke and blood clots and optimize therapy with cholesterol-lowering drugs, aspirin, anti-coagulants and other cardiovascular drugs should augment Berkeley HeartLab’s current disease management offerings to patients,” she said.

BHL provides cardiovascular risk management programs that include nutrition and exercise guidelines, medication compliance, and stress reduction, in concert with advanced lipid and other cardiovascular and metabolic testing. In 2006, BHL received referrals from over 4,100 physicians, processed samples from over 150,000 patients, and performed over 1.6 million tests.

BHL turned profitable in 2004 and in 2006 reported improved EBIT margins in excess of 17%. BHL’s revenues are expected to exceed $85 million this year.

Celera is a molecular diagnostics business that uses proprietary genomics and proteomics discovery platforms to identify and validate diagnostic markers.

In other dealmaking activity:

• CardioDynamics International (San Diego) reported completing the sale of its Vermed unit to Medical Device Partners (Regensburg, Germany), for $8 million in cash. Additionally, CardoDynamics secured a five-year supply agreement for Vermed’s ICG sensors.

CardioDyanmics reported that the decision to spin off Vermed was based on declining margins and profits in its electrocardiogram (ECG) business and the need to focus limited resources on its proprietary ICG business which has the best growth potential. Additionally, the supply agreement provides for maintenance of a long-term relationship with Vermed for ICG sensors.

CardioDynamics said that the proceeds from the sale will be invested in the higher growth-potential ICG business; investment in clinical trial research aimed at inclusion of ICG into cardiac guidelines; and core technology improvement. Proceeds were also used to repay the company’s remaining $1.4 million bank debt owed to Comerica.

CardioDynamics manufactures non-invasive ICG products.

Vermed is a supplier of disposable electrodes and related supplies used in ECG and other diagnostic procedures.

• ParagonDx (Morrisville, North Carolina), a developer of genetic and molecular diagnostics, has acquired the assets of Gentris Diagnostics (Morrisville, North Carolina), a subsidiary of Gentris.

As a stand-alone company, ParagonDx will focus on developing molecular diagnostic products for laboratories. These products are intended to enhance medical care by providing early diagnostic information rapidly.

Michael Murphy, former president/CEO of Gentris, will serve as president/CEO of ParagonDx.

Among key assets ParagonDx purchased from Gentris Diagnostics were the first six FDA-cleared human genomic reference controls and forty-six other reference control products currently being sold to reference laboratories and diagnostic product developers. Reference controls help assure the quality of genetic tests, while pharmacogenomic tests explain how an individual’s genetic makeup affects their response to drugs.

Another asset acquired in the deal is a new in vitro diagnostic test to determine a safe starting dose of warfarin, a blood thinner that prevents and treats blood clots.

The formation of ParagonDx comes in the wake of the announcement earlier this month by the FDA to update warfarin’s label to include genetic testing information.

In the future, the company said it plans a series of products for molecular testing. ParagonDx will improve genetic tests, currently made as “home-brew” or Laboratory Developed Tests (LDTs), and take them through the FDA clearance process. With FDA clearance, these tests can be used in the clinical setting to improve diagnoses and patient health.

Joe Sorge, founder and former CEO of Stratagene (La Jolla, California), a company that sold research reagents and equipment to the life sciences industry before it was acquired by Agilent (Santa Clara, California) in June, has assumed a controlling interest in ParagonDx. Gentris will retain a minority stake in the new company.