Academia and Government According to the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s preliminary analysis of the US’ fiscal 2008 budget (see IBO 12/31/07), federal spending for R&D will increase by only 1.2%, but a 15.7% increase in spending is allocated for R&D capital equipment and facilities. France’s budget gives a 7.8%—or €1.88 billion ($2.66 […]

As a feature of our annual forecast issue, IBO selects a firm from our industry as “company of the year.” In designating the company of the year, IBO recognizes an analytical instrument maker that has accomplished significant technical, operational and financial achievements. Such achievements are a function of strong financial performance, market leadership, innovative product […]

In IBO’s annual forecast issue, we take a look back at the business trends that emerged or accelerated in the prior year in the analytical instrument industry. The list is presented in alphabetical order. Applied Markets Companies such as Applied Biosystems, Bruker Daltonics, Invitrogen, QIAGEN NV and Waters continued to expand into the so-called “applied […]

The Qatar National Research Fund (QNRF) announced the first winners of its $25 million in research awards. A component of Qatar’s efforts to improve the profile of its research in the international community and to increase its research-to-R&D spending percentage, the National Research Priorities Program (NPRP) funds projects for three years. A total of $10 […]

OpGen raised $23.6 million in equity financing in September in a round led by CHL Medical Partners, Highland Capital Partners and Versant Ventures. In-Q-Tel, a Central Intelligence Agency–launched investment firm, made a strategic investment in OpGen. Base4 innovation and Harvard Medical School’s George Church have joined VisiGen Biotechnologies, 454 Life Sciences, the Foundation for Applied […]

According to government estimates, 2007 Canadian R&D spending reached almost CAD 29.0 billion ($27.1 billion), a 3.3% increase over 2006’s CAD 28.1 billion ($24.8 billion). Academia accounted for 50.0%, or CAD 459 million ($428.2 million) of the increase, and industry accounted for 45.4%, or CAD 416 million ($388.1 million). Industry was the largest performer of […]

This month, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced the Human Microbiome Project. The human microbiome is comprised of the genomes of every micro-organism in humans. The Project will provide $115 million over five years to sequence and characterize at least 600 microbial genomes. Samples will be grown in laboratories and collected from the digestive […]

In 2007, several analytical instrument and laboratory product companies went public. However, as shown below, the stock prices for most of these companies were unable to prosper under this year’s volatile market conditions. The best performing IPO was DNA sequencer developer Helicos Biosciences (see IBO 5/31/07). The company, which has yet to officially release its […]

In September, DeltaNu appointed Gilden Photonics as its new distributor for the UK and Ireland. Polychromix signed a strategic investment and technology advancement agreement with In-Q-Tel. Scinco named Cosa Instruments the exclusive US distributor of its PDA UV/Vis spectrophotometers. Ocean Optics, a Halma company, promoted Rob Randelman, PhD, vice president of Sales and Marketing, to […]