Company Announcements

Exiqon’s 2013 revenues grew 5.3% to DKK 123.6 million ($22.0 million) (see page 12). Life Sciences product sales rose 13.6% to 78% of total sales. Fourth quarter 2013 sales were negatively affected by supplier problems. For the first three quarters, North American sales increased 14.0% to DKK 34.3 million ($6.1 million). The company forecasts 2014 sales to total DKK 150 million ($26.7 million).

In February, Horizon Discovery agreed to distribute Haplogen’s Haploid Gene Trap Mutant Collection of isogenic human cell lines deficient for the expression of single genes. It is the first time Horizon is distributing another company’s products.

Horizon Discovery agreed to distribute SIRION Biotech’s RNAiONE custom shRNA–development services, off-the-shelf validated shRNA and cDNA overexpression reagents.

PBL Assay Science entered into a licensing agreement to offer HumanZyme’s authentic human cell–expressed cytokines and growth factors.

INDIGO Biosciences named Cayman Chemicals as a distributor of its nuclear-receptor assay kits and screening services.

DDC Medica signed a licensing agreement with the NIST to commercialize mouse cell-line authentication technology using STR DNA technology.

In February, OriGene acquired BioChek, a provider of immunodiagnostic test kits and custom immunoassay development for health care and research. The acquisition expands OriGene’s IVD portfolio and leverages its Chinese diagnostics channels.

BellBrook Labs named Lucerna-Chem as a distributor for Switzerland.

Abcam’s half-year revenues for the period ending December 31, 2013, grew 8.1% to £61.9 million ($97.5 million) (see IBO 3/31/14). Adjusted operating income grew 4.8% to £22.8 million ($36.1 million). Catalog sales rose 9.1%, 9.3% in constant currency, to account for 92% of revenues. Catalog sales in Asia Pacific; Europe, the Middle East and Africa; Japan and the Americas rose 14.7%, 10.3%, 8.8% and 7.2% to make up 12%, 35%, 9% and 43% of sales, respectively. The company repositioned its organization around a global functional structure.

Product Introductions

In February, Platypus Technologies released the Oris Pro 96-Well Invasion Assay for quantitative real-time and end-point measurements of cell invasion.

In February, Bio-Rad Laboratories launched the ReadLink antibody-labeling kits for labeling microscale amounts (50–100 µg) of antibody. The kits require two steps, and the protocol takes 70 minutes.

In March, DNA2.0 introduced a set of CRISPR/Cas9 tools featuring the NickaseNinja system, which offers the high-fidelity editing of Cas9 nickase plus guide RNA pairs in a single-vector format.