Company Announcements

Eurofins acquired Operon Biotechnologies in late 2007 and consolidated the company’s operations with Eurofins MWG and Eurofins Medigenomix for custom oligonucleotide synthesis services. In total, the three operations generate $50 million in revenues.

Under a three-year research, supply and marketing agreement, Berry & Associates and Luminos will develop designer reagents to enable luminescent detection methods for novel in vitro assays.

BioTrove licensed human embryonic stem cell technology, consisting of 173 patents, from the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF), in order to develop its Embryomics product line. WARF has now completed 23 licensing agreements with 17 companies.

Olink Biosciences signed Nacalai Tesque as a Japanese distributor of its Duolink product line.

Under a cross licensing agreement, Epigenomics AG licensed DxS’s Scorpions technology for R&D and research kits, and DxS licensed certain Epigenomics patents covering the use of Scorpions technology for DNA methylation applications.

In January, Sigma-Aldrich agreed to distribute Nanoco Technologies’ luminescent quantum-dot crystals under the brand name Lumidots through the Aldrich Materials Science initiative of its Research Specialties business.

HTG named Tim (TJ) Johnson president and CEO in January. He was previously a partner in LVC Consulting and was a senior manger at Ventana Medical Systems.

In 2007, Lonza’s Bioscience unit reported revenues of CHF 189 million ($157.5 million), EBIT of CHF 28 million ($23.3 million) and a margin of 14.8% (see IBO 3/15/08). In the Cell Discovery & Molecular Biology business, sales of bioassays, media and adult stem cells grew in double digits, but cell biology sales volumes were below target.

Meridian Bioscience promoted John A. Kraeutler, president and COO, to CEO, replacing William J. Motto, who was named executive chairman.

Product Introductions

Luminex launched the FlexmiR Select miRNA assay, which enables custom ordering of subsets of miRNAs.

Invitrogen introduced PlateSelect RNAi duplexes for customized 96-well plates using the company’s Stealth or standard BLOCK-iT RNAi duplexes.

Invitrogen launched the Dynabeads MyOne SILANE and the Dynabeads SILANE viral NA and genomic DNA kits.

Norgen Biotek released the All-in-One Purification Kit for sequentially isolating RNA, miRNA, DNA and proteins from a single sample using one column.

Celprogen launched 11 major cancer stem cells and the Cancer Stem Cell Tissue culture system.

Biomatrica introduced RNAstable for preserving RNA at room temperature for up to five months.