Company Announcements

Avacta announced in May a collaboration with UbiQ Bio to develop ubiquitin-specific antibodies.

In June, Cambridge Research Biochemicals announced an exclusive supply-and-marketing agreement for its BIONET brand peptides with Key Organics.

Cellectis granted Thermo Fisher Scientific a license to its TAL nucleases, currently marketed by Thermo under the brand name TALEN, outside the therapeutic field, with exclusive rights to grant sublicenses in R&D, bioproduction and certain applied markets.

In June, Horizon Discovery named Dr. Susan Galbraith, senior vice president and head of Oncology Innovative Medicines at AstraZeneca, and Susan Searle, cofounder and ex-CEO of Imperial Innovations, to its Board.

Horizon Discovery entered into a license agreement with the Broad Institute to access intellectual property related to the CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing system.

Horizon Discovery entered into a license agreement in July with Stanford University to access intellectual property related to the use of a proprietary serotype of adeno-associated virus for commercial applications involving homologous recombination of gene editing.

In June, EpiCypher named Sam Tetlow as CEO. Most recently, he was CBO at ILS.

Mike Redmond will step down from Abcam’s Board later this year.

Cellular Dynamics Executive Vice President and CFO David S. Snyder resigned in June.

In June, AYOXXA Biosystems, a developer of in situ encoded bead-array technology, completed a €9.0 million ($12.1 million) Series B financing round.

Product Introductions

Thermo Fisher Scientific introduced in June the Thermo Scientific EpiJET 5-hmC and 5-mC Analysis Kit, with a protocol that can be completed in four hours.

Thermo Fisher Scientific launched the PSC Cardiomyocyte Differentiation Kit, and the Molecular Probes Human Cardiomyocyte Immunocytochemistry and PSC Live Staining Kit.

Promega released the CellTiter-Flo 3-D Cell Viability Assay for assessing the viability of cells in 3-D microtissue-model systems.

Merck Millipore launched the Simplicon RNA Reprogramming Technology for the efficient generation of virus-free iPSCs using a single transfection step.

Agilent Technologies introduced the QuikChange HT Protein Engineering System, the first in a series of synthetic biological solutions for rational mutagenesis. The System is a site-directed mutagenesis solution that creates libraries of rationally designed protein variants.

In July, SAGE Labs introduced the SAGEspeed CRISPR/Cas9 Reagents.