Company Announcements

Full-year 2014 sales for Horizon Discovery climbed 79.1% to £11.9 million ($19.5 million) (see IBO 4/15/15). Sales benefit-ed from acquisitions, as well as demand for genome-editing services and molecular diagnostic reagent products. Products and Services revenues jumped 39.4% and 151.6% to make up 29% and 60% of sales, respectively. Sales for the Leveraged segment (fees for services at reduced margin, downstream milestones and royalties) declined 5.6% to make up 10%. Adjusted operating loss widened by 81.3% to £5.3 million ($8.7 million). The customer base grew by 171% to 955. The Americas, Europe/Middle East/Africa and Asia Pacific revenues grew 116.2%, 34.1% and 17.3% to represent 68%, 27% and 5% of sales, respectively. Four customers accounted for over 20% of revenues.

Under an April supply and commercialization agreement, Thermo Fisher Scientific will market and distribute Horizon Discovery’s X-MAN human haploid and diploid isogenic cell line collection and services worldwide, with the exception of Japan.

In May, Horizon Discovery named Grahame Cook to its Board. He was formerly joint CEO of WestLB Panmure.

In April, StemBioSys closed an $8 million Series A preferred stock financing.

Optivia Biotechnology and Hurel announced a technology and marketing alliance. Optivia’s HµRELflux assay will be offered as a service in conjunction with Optivia’s single- and multitransporter assay services.

MoBiTec entered into a distribution agreement for Japan with GORYO for calcium indicators and cancer-selective fluorescent imaging probes.

In May, STEMCELL Technologies entered into a licensing agreement with the Salk Institute for Biological Sciences for the rights to commercialize the BrainPhys Neuronal Medium.

Lucigen signed an exclusive distribution agreement with Sigma-Aldrich’s Indian subsidiary.

Product Introductions

In April, Qualyst Transporter Solutions and Hepregen launched their first codeveloped and colabeled transporter kit, HepatoPac B-CLEAR assay kit, for in vitro analysis of chemical transporter proteins in the human liver.

Rocky Mountain Biologics released Fetalgrow, a fetal bovine serum alternative that is a blend of a calf serum base supplemented with proprietary additives.

Desktop Genetics launched the DeskGen Platform for gene editing, including designing genome editing vectors and cloning strategies.

AMSBIO introduced an exclusive biotinylated protein collection.

In May, Promega launched the NanoBRET Protein Interaction Assays for quantitatively measuring protein-protein inter-actions in live cells.