Takara Bio's US unit bought Curio Bioscience, a California startup founded in 2021 whose Seeker and Trekker kits map where genes are active inside tissue, based on Slide-seq and Slide-tags methods from the Broad Institute. The US announcement gave no terms, but Takara Bio's Japanese filing put the upfront price at about ¥6.36 billion ($40.5 million), with up to $150 million more if products hit milestones. About Curio Curio was co-founded by chief executive Stephen Fodor. Takara Bio USA chief executive Carol Lou called its Trekker kit the first truly single-cell spatial technology. Curio had sales of about ¥653 million and an operating loss of about ¥905 million in 2023, with negative net assets. Takara Bio's plan Takara Bio, based in Shiga, Japan, says it made the first commercial kits for single-cell RNA and DNA sequencing. It plans to use Curio to build better products, stand apart from rivals and expand its contract spatial analysis services. The milestone payments, up to about ¥23.6 billion, are more than three times the upfront price.
