Medical testing company Clarient Inc. is moving its headquarters and laboratory to Aliso Viejo.
The operations now are in Irvine and San Juan Capistrano, which is home to the headquarters.
Clarient does testing to assess and treat cancer.
Doctors and drug makers are among the company’s customers.
Outgrew Facilities
The company outgrew its current facilities, said Ronald Andrews Jr., Clarient’s chief executive.
More work for pathologists and a deal signed in summer with Dako AS, a Danish provider of cancer diagnostics, has spurred growth, he said.
“We’ve been very blessed,” Andrews said. “We outgrew the (Irvine) facility way earlier than we anticipated. So in July of last year, we realized with the business trajectory that we were on that we were going to need a bigger facility.”
Clarient’s new headquarters and laboratory is off the San Joaquin Hills (73) Toll Road and Aliso Creek Parkway.
Clarient plans to occupy 54,000 square feet of a 78,000-square-foot building.
The company plans to sublet the rest to startup companies, Andrews said.
Clarient leased the building from Olen Commercial Realty, part of Newport Beach-based Olen Properties Corp.
Rick Kaplan of Cushman & Wakefield Inc. represented Clarient. Jeff Carr of CB Richard Ellis Group Inc. represented Olen.
“Obviously, we wanted to stay in Orange County,” An-drews said.
Clarient now has about 140 workers. The company’s laboratory, technology and administrative groups all should be in Aliso Viejo by the end of March, according to Andrews.
The building should allow for more production of an instrument that Clarient’s developing with Dako and plans to come out with in the third quarter, Andrews said.
Cancer Diagnostics
The move is the latest of several changes that have happened at Clarient within the past 18 months or so.
The company changed its name from ChromaVision Medical Systems Inc. last year.
Historically, Clarient made lab instruments for doctors to help them manage breast cancer cases.
That changed when Andrews took over in 2004. His experience includes stints at Hoffman-LaRoche Ltd.
Moving into cancer diagnostics put Clarient in competition with US Labs Inc., an Irvine-based unit of Laboratory Corporation of America.
Other rivals include Genzyme Corp. of Cambridge, Mass., which boosted its cancer testing business by buying Impath Inc. of New York.
Tough times prompted Clarient’s move into cancer testing, Andrews said in an earlier interview.
The company came close to running out of money in late 2003, he said.
CEO’s Arrival
Around that time, Safeguard Scientifics Inc., a Wayne, Pa.-based venture capital firm that is Clarient’s majority owner, brought in Andrews and other managers and led a $21 million stock sale.
Late last year, Clarient’s BioPharma services unit signed research pacts with Pfizer Inc. and Eli Lilly & Co.
Clarient also raised $15 million in a November financing to help it pay for the move and for research and development efforts of the BioPharma unit.
The company still is small with a recent market value of about $65 million. It’s due to report its fourth-quarter and 2005 results in February.
Through the first nine months of 2005, the company posted a net loss of $11.1 million on sales of $14.1 million.
No analysts follow the company.
“A lot of these investors are waiting to see how the year ends,” Andrews said.
