Company Announcements

In March, Invitrogen announced that its drug discovery products will be validated on selected Tecan microplate readers and instruments, starting with the Infinite Series, and the companies will codevelop applications.

Invitrogen’s drug discovery products will be tested on certain BMG Labtech microplate readers and certain readers will be certified for use with Invitrogen platforms.

In 2007, revenue for Robotic Technology Systems’ Life Science fell 26.7% to £7.4 million ($14.7 million) and operating loss before exceptional items increased to £0.8 million ($1.6 million) from £0.4 million ($0.8 million) (see IBO 3/31/08). The division reduced its custom robotic solutions business and reported pricing competitiveness for low- to medium-capacity sample management systems.

Tecan’s head of the Business Segment Sample Management, Bernhard Iseli, resigned in March.

CyBio AG’s 2007 sales grew 24% to €19.16 million ($26.2 million) and operating loss increased to €4.6 million ($6.3 million) from €0.5 million ($0.6 million) (see page 12). Germany, other Europe, North America and Asia accounted for 39%, 24%, 33% and 4% of sales, respectively. US sales dropped 35.4% to €3.1 million ($4.2 million). The company forecasts flat sales growth for 2008.

In April, Panasonic Factory Solutions and Kalypsys entered into a joint commercialization agreement in North America for their high-throughput screening system.

Genetix opened an office in Tokyo, Japan, in April.

Product Introductions

Caliper Life Sciences introduced the Zephyr Solid Phase Extraction Workstation at a price of $65,000.

Hamilton launched the MicroLab Nimbus pipetting platform, featuring a 96-channel pipetting head.

Innovadyne Technologies introduced the 16-channel Genome Express system for low-volume pipetting.

BMG Labtech released its new Microplate Reader Analysis and Data Reduction Software (MARS) in February.

BMG Labtech launched the PHERAstar PLUS microplate reader for high-throughput screening.

Eppendorf AG introduced the epMotion 5070 CB for cell culture liquid handling.

Agilent Velocity11 launched the Automated Microplate Spin-Down Workstation for up to 320 microplates.

Protein Discovery launched the Passport 1200 Sample Prep System for MS, an electrophoretic system that depletes, fractionates, desalts and concentrates 96 samples in one hour.

PerkinElmer introduced the VICTOR X Multilabel Plate Reader platform, designed for a more diverse set of applications.

Bio-Rad introduced the iMark Absorbance Microplate Reader, the xMark Absorbance Microplate Spectrophotomer and Microplate Manager 6 software.