Company Announcements

In January, RainDance Technologies closed a Series D financing round of $37.5 million, coled by Mohr Davidow Ventures and new investor Quaker BioVentures.

Precision System Science entered into a supply and distribution agreement with IntegenX for its SX-8G Compact Automated Nucleic Acid Extractor, which will be cobranded as the Apollo 324.

In February, Precision System Science entered into a basic development agreement with NorDiag for next-generation sequencing (NGS) reagents and protocols for the SX-8G Compact.

In January, Caliper Life Sciences and NuGEN Technologies announced a comarketing agreement for the development of automated methods of NGS sample preparation on Caliper’s Sciclone NGS Workstation.

In February, Caliper and Covaris formed a comarketing agreement for automated NGS workflows.

Agilent named BGI the first certified service provider in China for its SureSelect target enrichment system.

Product Introductions

Beckman Coulter introduced the SPRIworks Fragment Library System III, which automates the preparation of libraries for Life Technologies’ SOLID Sequencer.

Horizon Technology launched the Waste-Water Sample Prep System, consisting of the SPE-DEX 4790 automated SPE system, a Fast Flow Sediment Disk Holder and a new analytical SPE disk for the capture of semivolatile compounds.

In January, Agilent released the SureSelect XT Mouse All Exon Kit for target enrichment of a model organism exome. Its release brings the number of SureSelect kits to 34.

Agilent launched the SureSelect RNA Capture Kits, which let geneticists focus on specific genomic loci or transcripts. The kit can be used to combine targeted genome and transcriptome data in a single experiment. Agilent also introduced the SureSelect Human Kinome kits.

Dionex introduced five new SolEx SPE cartridges, which can be added on-line in an HPLC system.

RainDance Technologies introduced the DeepSeq FFPE Solution, an end-to-end workflow for the ultra-deep targeted sequencing of FFPE and fresh frozen tissue samples.

RainDance Technologies released the ASDSeq and XSeq Research Screening Panels, which enable researchers to simultaneously interrogate key genes known to be linked to X-chromosome disorders and syndromic forms of Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Covaris launched the Bench-top SF220 High Performance Formulation Processing System, which extends Adaptive Focused Acoustics technology to higher-volume sample processing. Pilot-scale systems are in development.