Company Announcements

Stemgent coexclusively licensed Cell Design’s AdipoDesign Starter Kit and AdipoDesign MaxiKit.

Gene synthesis firm Gene Oracle named Sigma-Aldrich its exclusive supplier of custom oligonucleotides, and the companies will comarket its GeneIOS system.

StemCells acquired Stem Cell Sciences, a provider of media formulation and reagents, in April for 2,650,000 shares and $700,000 in cash.

SeqWright made an equity investment in LaserGen, a developer of a reversible termination chemistry for next-generation sequencing.

Tepnel Life Sciences, a provider of molecular diagnostics and research products and services, including immunological reagents, was acquired by Gen-Probe in April for $136.4 million. Gen-Probe cited its interest in Tepnel’s-based HLA testing products. In 2007, Tepnel reported revenues of £17.8 million ($32.4 million).

Abnova and Olink Bioscience agreed to codvelop and comarket their respective antibodies and Duolink proximity ligation assay technology product line.

In April, Expression Pathology received $6.5 million in new financing, which was led by Abraxis BioScience.

Product Introductions

Invitrogen launched the GIBCO OptiCHO Protein Express Kit for the development of serum-free, stable cell lines for biotherapeutic development. It provides cells banked under cGMP conditions.

Invitrogen released the GIBCO OpTmizer T-cell Expansion serum-free media for culturing and expanding human T-cells that does not require additional serum to achieve optimal, cost-efficient results.

Millipore launched the AllostericProfiler service, which provides cell-based assays to evaluate the functional selectivity of drugs against GPCRs.

Thermo Fisher Scientific introduced the Thermo Scientific Pierce Crosslink Immunoprecipitation (IP) Kit, which extends the functionality of Protein A/G–based IP reactions by adding crosslinking chemistry.

Thermo Fisher Scientific released two Cellomics HCR Reagent Kits: the Phospho-mTOR Kit and Multiplex Mitosis-Apoptosis Kit.

PerkinElmer launched six AlphaScreen SureFire assay kits for cellular pathway mapping, bringing the total number of kits to 57.

PerkinElmer released a series of AlphaLISA “No Wash” immunoassay kits, bringing the number of such kits to 54. The kits are based on ALPHA (Amplified Luminescent Proximity Homogeneous Assay) technology, an alternative to ELISA.

GE Healthcare introduced a suite of new 2-D electrophoresis products, including precast low fluorescent DIGE Gels and DIGE Buffer Kit, and repackaged CyDye DIGE Fluor saturation and minimal dyes.