Company Announcements

First-quarter Roche Applied Science revenue declined 12%, down 3% in local currencies, to CHF 198 million ($211 million) due to a large one-time order a year ago. Custom Biotech sales grew 13%, Genomic Analysis sales increased 1%, Other revenue fell 10% and qPCR & Nucleic Acid Purification sales fell 16%. Europe/Middle East/Africa and Rest of World sales fell 2% and 14% to make up 40% and 23% of sales, respectively. North American sales rose 4%.

In April, Agilent joined the University of California Berkeley’s Synthetic Biology Institute, which spans eight academic departments at Berkeley and four divisions at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The Daily Cal reported that 60% of Agilent’s ten-year, multimillion-dollar support will foster specific research or scientists chosen by the company and 40% will go toward internal resources.

GE reported that first-quarter GE Healthcare Life Sciences revenue grew 15%.

For the first quarter, Danaher reported that Water Quality core revenues and AB SCIEX core revenues each increased in the high single digits. Leica Microsystems core revenues grew in the mid-single digits.

Hitachi High-Technologies announced the renewal for a five-year period of its marketing and distribution agreement with Techcomp for its analytical instrument products in China, Southeast Asia and South Asia as well as electron microscope products in China. The companies also plan to establish new application labs and jointly conduct research with Chinese universities.

Under its mid-term management plan announced in April, Takara Bio forecasts Genetic Research Engineering sales to total ¥16,655 million ($203.8 million) in fiscal 2012, with Research Reagents accounting for 72% of sales. Division sales are expected to grow 5.9% in fiscal 2013 and 4.8% in fiscal 2014. Division operating profit is forecast to be ¥4,230 million ($51.8 million) in fiscal 2012.

Biotage announced in April that it has taken over direct sales in Sweden and Denmark.

Life Technologies named Dr. Ora Hirsch Pescovitz, executive vice president for Medical Affairs and Health System CEO at the University of Michigan, to its Board in April. He replaces W. Ann Reynolds, PhD.

Eppendorf’s 2010 revenues increased 11.7%, 7.5% adjusted for currency, to €484.0 million ($636.8 million) (see page 12).

Sales to Asia/Pacific/Africa rose 19.9% to 21% of revenues. European sales rose 8.4%, 7.6% adjusted for currency, to make up 37% of sales. North/Latin American sales grew 10.9%, 5.0% adjusted for currency.

Illumina announced in May new list prices for sequencing whole human genomes through the Illumina Genome Network (IGN) of $5,000 per genome for projects of ten samples or more and $4,000 for projects of 50 samples or more. The IGN has received orders for over 1,000 samples since its introduction in July 2010.

EMD Millipore opened a 28,000-sq.-ft. Biopharmaceutical Technical and Training Center in Shanghai, China.