Company Announcements

Spark Holland added Axel Semrau as a “Value Added Partner” for Switzerland and Austria. The companies have worked together for five years in Germany.

In May, Purigen Biosystems completed an $18.2 million Series A financing from 5AM Ventures and Roche Venture Fund. The company plans to commercialize an isotachophoresis-based benchtop system for automated extraction and quantification of samples for genomic testing. Commercial systems should be placed in the first half of 2017.

Product Introductions

Waters introduced in January five new ProteinWorks Digest Kits for LC/MS quantification of proteins via the surrogate-peptide approach.

New England Biolabs launched environmentally friendly Monarch Kits for DNA purification.

In February, PerkinElmer launched the benchtop Chemagic 360 instrument for automated DNA/RNA isolation when working with various clinical materials in sample volumes of 10 µL to 10 mL.

LCTech launched the FREESTYLE XANA for unattended sample preparation of water samples in volumes of 1–10 L from raw sample to filling GC vials.

Thermo Fisher Scientific released the Thermo Scientific MSIA (Mass Spectrometric Immunoassay) Strepdavidin EVO microcolumns for Tecan’s Freedom EVO series of robotic platforms.

Biotage launched the Metal Scavenger Screening Kit for screening API product mixtures and identifying an optimum scavenger for their downstream metal removal process.

AMSBIO introduced two additions to its MagSi range of magnetic bead–based products for protein purification, proteomics and genomics applications: MagSi-NGSPREP Plus and MagSi-DT Removal.

In March, Horizon Technology introduced the SPE-DEX 4790 for extraction of semi- and nonvolatiles in drinking water.

In May, Horizon Technology launched the SmartPrep Cartridge Extractor II for method development and automation of previously manual methods.

In April, Porvair released the 96-well 2 mL deep-well Genomics Sample Preparation Plates, designed to withstand demanding applications using steel ball bearings in the wells shaken at up to 1,500 rpm.

Zymo Research introduced the Quick-DNA FFPE Kit and Quick-RNA FFPE Kit for DNA and RNA purification.

In May, Analytik Jena launched SmartExtraction technology for nucleic acid isolation and purification. It does not require phenol/chloroform, ion exchangers, filter columns, filter plates, or suspensions from magnetic or paramagnetic particles. The 1 mL filter tips can be used on Analytik Jena’s pipetting systems and can be adapted to any liquid handling system.