Company Announcements

Empire Genomics announced in January the acquisition of ID Labs, a molecular diagnostics–reagent firm.

StoneCalibre announced that its portfolio company, Anatrace, acquired Microlytic, a provider of solutions for soluble protein crystallization, in January. The companies partnered in 2014 to develop and commercialize Analytic, a brand targeted at membrane-protein researchers.

Exiqon 2014 sales grew 7.1% to DKK 132.4 million ($23.6 million) (see page 12), led by new RNA-sequencing services. Product sales made up 73% of revenues. Life Sciences sales grew 8.6% to account for 97%, including 32.4% service revenue growth to DKK 20.5 million ($3.6 million).

In February, BioGenes signed long-term distributors in the US, Canada, India, Japan and Middle/South America for its enhanced generic HPC assay, CHOl360-HCP ELISA.

Avacta partnered with ProtATonce to develop and commercialize high-performance multiplexed assays for the Luminex platform using Affirmers.

KromaTiD appointed tebu-bio as a European distributor for its directional Genomic Hybridization chromosome-imaging platform.

Plexera Biotechnology agreed to distribute JPT Peptide Technologies peptide-based products and services to the Chinese immunotherapy, vaccine and proteomics markets. The companies will also collaborate.

In March, VWR expanded its distribution agreement with New England Biolabs (NEB), allowing VWR increased access to NEB’s product portfolio and technical support in the US and Puerto Rico. VWR customers will now have access to NEB’s products through VWR’s e-business platform, sales organization and the VWRCATALYST on-site service organization.

Product Introductions

Agilent Technologies released in January the addition of the DNA Integrity Number for assessing the integrity of genomic DNA to its Genomic DNA ScreenTape assay.

In February, Promega introduced the 6 x 5 LC-MS/MS Peptide Reference Mix, a reagent and software combination, for monitoring LC and MS parameters.

Siloam Biosciences introduced the Optimiser Plus microfluidic microplates, a next-generation product featuring improvements in limits of detection, dynamic measurement range and reproducibility.

AMSBIO introduced a high throughput PARP in vivo pharmacodynamic assay that can be used to monitor the efficacy of poly-ADP-ribose polymerase inhibitors on PAR formation in vivo and to measure drug action on PARP in both in vivo and in vitro settings.

AMSBIO released the mRNA-In and mRNA-In Neuro targeted transfection reagents.

RayBiotech launched the RayBio Glycan Array 100, featuring 100 synthetic glycans on a glass-slide support for profiling protein-carbohydrate interactions.