Company Announcements

For the fiscal year ending March 31, sales for Takara Bio’s Genetic Engineering Research unit fell 4.8% to ¥15,882 million ($185 million) (see IBO 9/30/11). Sales of research reagents and contract research services were each unchanged. Scientific instrument sales declined significantly due to last year’s demand from public agencies. The unit aims for Indian sales of ¥600 million ($7 million) by fiscal 2014 and annual growth in China of more than 10%.

QIAGEN elected Vera Kallmeyer, MD, PhD, consulting professor in the Stanford School of Medicine’s Department of Neurosurgery, and Elizabeth E. Tallett, a principal of Hunter Partners, to its Supervisory Board in June.

In August, Promega broke ground on a new cGMP facility in Fitchburg, Wisconsin. The 260,000-square-foot facility will employ 100 people in the next five years.

Pall opened the 430-square-meter Pall Life Sciences Center of Excellence in Singapore in September.

Agilent entered into an agreement with Dr. Shane Snyder from the University of Arizona’s Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering and the University’s BIO5 Institute to develop ways to detect emerging contaminants in water.

In September, LabLogic Systems, a provider of radiochromatography and nuclear medicine products, acquired Southern Scientific, which supplies radiation measurement, detection and analytical systems. Southern Scientific has 28 employees.

In September, Danaher appointed Terri List-Stoll to its Board, increasing the Board’s size from 10 to 11 members. She is senior vice president and treasurer of Procter & Gamble.

In September, Bruker named William J. Knight CFO, a position he previously held (see IBO 11/15/04). He will also continue to serve as interim COO.

GE Healthcare announced in September plans to invest $1 billion of its R&D budget over the next five years in cancer diagnostic and molecular-imaging capabilities as well as technologies for the manufacture of biopharmaceuticals and for cancer research.

In September, the Egyptian Ministry of Health and Population and PerkinElmer and its distributor HVD Vertriebs opened a lab in Cairo, Egypt, which will offer newborn screening free of charge to Egyptian families.

Product Introductions

Shimadzu introduced the LabSolutions CS 6.0 data analysis system, which enables remote control of multiple LC and GC systems from any network PC.

In September, PerkinElmer launched the Universal Operational Qualification compliance service as part of its OneSource Laboratory Service offering. The initial release supports HPLC instrumentation. GC capability will be available before the end of 2011.