Company Announcements

DeCODE Genetics sold Emerald BioStructures and Emerald BioSystems to Beryllium in November 2009 for an initial payment of $3 million and an earn-out payment. Emerald BioStructures founder Lance Steward, PhD, MBA, was named CEO of both companies.

HighRes Biosolutions named Andy Zaayenga as director of Business Development.

BioTek Instruments established a direct sales and service organization in Switzerland in January. It was created from a previous partnership with Witec AG.

Charm Sciences, a provider of food safety diagnostics, announced in January the acquisition of the MLX Microplate Luminometer product from Dynex Technologies.

The Automation Partnership appointed Phillip Sefton as commercial director. He was previously vice president of Commercial Operations at QIAGEN.

In February, RTS Life Science acquired a 65% interest in Hatch Science, a developer and manufacturer of scientific instruments, for an initial consideration of $325,000 and an earn-out payment. Hatch recorded 2009 sales of $448,000 and an operating loss of $798,000.

Pion named Woodbridge Scientific as the exclusive US distributor of its Rainbow Dynamic Dissolution Monitor System.

For the quarter ended December 31, 2009, CyBio AG reported a 46.4% decrease in sales, to €3.0 million ($4.4 million), EBIT of €0.2 million ($0.3 million) and free liquid funds of €1.9 million ($1.3 million).

SOTAX will recommend Mallinckrodt Baker’s JT Baker DILUT-ITT dissolution media concentrates for use with its dissolution testing equipment, and SOTAX customers will be able to request DILUT-ITT directly from SOTAX.

Product Introductions

Rigaku Automation launched the Minstrel HT UV, calling it the first automated high-throughput UV and visible crystal-imaging and protein crystal–monitoring system.

Tecan introduced the Infinite F50 eight-channel absorbance microplate reader for ELISA applications.

Tecan and Applied Biosystems developed an off-the-shelf system for bead washing for ePCR purification based on Tecan’s Freedom EVO 75 workstation equipped with a Te-MagS magnetic bead separation module.

Thermo Fisher Scientific released the Thermo Scientific Orbitor RS, a high-speed microplate mover, featuring a bidirectional telescoping arm.

Thermo Fisher Scientific and The Automation Partnership introduced the Capit-All IS Automated Capper/Decapper.

Dolomite and Emerald Biosystems launched the Microcapillary Protein Crystallization System Plug Maker for low-volume crystallization, which automates the creation of a series of 10 nL plugs of protein and precipitant samples in a plastic CrystalCard.