Hamburg, Germany 6/4/18—Scientific instrument firm Bruker has purchased Sierra Sensors, a developer and manufacturing of SPR-based biosensors. Financial details were not provided. Sierra Sensors’ systems determine the specificity, affinity, kinetic rates and thermodynamics of molecular interactions for drug discovery applications. “Real­ time array SPR+, combined with novel microfluidics, can accelerate many drug discovery workflows, such as fragment-­based drug discovery (FBDD) with novel chemistries,” stated Dr. Rohan Thakur, executive vice president for Life Science Mass Spectrometry. “Sierra’s SPR technology provides affinity and kinetics of molecular interactions, from target validation all the way to lead optimization. SPR complements our ultra­high throughput screening (uHTS) mass spectrometry MALDI PharmaPulse solution for large-­scale primary and targeted secondary screens,” commented Dr. Meike Hamester, the Bruker Daltonics director,­ Small Molecule Pharma Business. “The complementary nature of both label-­free detection technologies opens new dimensions for studying drug targets and their interactions with novel ligand chemistries, helping the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry design more effective drugs at lower cost.”

Sierra Sensors’ headquarters in Hamburg, Germany, will become a Bruker center for excellence for SPR+Array technology, including applications development. The company develops and supplies biosensor-based instrumentation and consumables for the research and clinical diagnostic markets.