Company Announcements

SISCAPA Assay Technologies appointed Ian Wright, former head of the Strategic Innovation group at Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics, and Gustavo “Gus” Salem, former vice president and general manager of LC/MS at Agilent, to its Board in January.

Thermo Fisher Scientific and the National University of Singapore’s Environmental Research Institute formed a collaboration to study how metabolism in plants and bacteria affect Singapore’s water quality and ecosystem.

In January, Thermo Fisher Scientific announced a Technology Alliance Partnership with the Barnett Institute at Northeastern University. The alliance with Barnett Director Barry Karger and team will focus on the comprehensive characterization of complex proteins, ultra-trace analysis methods of proteomic samples and new LC/MS-based methods for the analysis of biosimilars.

Waters partnered with the UK’s Food and Environment Research Agency (Fera) to open the Fera International Food Safety Training Laboratory near York, UK, in January.

In February, 908 Devices, a developer of field-portable MS technology, announced the closing of an $8.1 million Series A investment, led by ARCH Venture Partners.

Agilent announced in February a research collaboration with Ameritox for accelerating analysis in the field of medication monitoring using Agilent’s RapidFire system.

Agilent entered into a strategic partnership with Sera Prognostics to develop proteomic assays for the early prediction of pregnancy complications. Sera purchased multiple Agilent UHPLC, LC and MS systems and is adapting Agilent automated sample preparation technologies for production.

Advion named KONIK an exclusive distributor for Spain, Portugal and South American countries, with the exception of Brazil.

Product Introductions

In January, Waters extended its Biopharmaceutical Platform Solution with UNIFI to support a mix of Q-TOF MS and optical detection instruments within a networked lab workgroup. The company also released a Glycan application workflow, including the GlycoBase 3+ Database, consisting of glycan chromatographic retention data expressed in glucose calibration units for sets of glycan structures associated with a range of biotherapeutics. Also released was the ACQUITY UPLC CSH130 C18 and XSelect HPLC CH130 C18 Charged Surface Hybrid particle columns, as well as two GlycoWorks prep kits and a labeling kit.

Thermo Fisher Scientific released the Thermo Scientific Prelude SPLC sample preparation and LC system designed to make LC/MS/MS more accessible to clinical researchers. It features TurboFlow technology.

In February, AB SCIEX introduced its first IVD devices, the API 3200MD and 3200MD QTRAP systems, designed for use in hospitals and clinical labs.