Company Announcements

Organic revenues for Merck KGaA’s Life Science Solutions business increased 13% in the second quarter and 8.0% in the third quarter.

Sigma-Aldrich exclusively licensed boronic acid surrogates for use in Suzuki-Miyaura coupling from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and will offer MIDA synthons for sale. The technology enables the efficient construction of complex molecules.

Sigma-Aldrich appointed Rakesh Sachdev vice president and CFO. He was previously president of Asia Pacific for ArvinMeritor. Dave Julien, president-Research Specialties, was named to the newly created role of president-Supply Chain. Frank Wicks, president-SAFC, was named president-Research Specialties & Research Essentials. Gilles Cottier, president-Research Essentials, was named president-SAFC, effective January 2009.

The Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center joined Sigma-Aldrich’s RNAi Partnership Program.

ZyGEM will produce a private-label line of DNA extraction products for the Advalytix product team of Olympus Life Science Research Europe GmbH.

Carna Biosciences named Shanghai Universal Biotech the exclusive distributor of its protein kinases in China.

Source Bioscience named three new distributors: EnoGene Biotech for China and Hong Kong, Dynebio for Korea and Bio.Tec RTE for Singapore and Malaysia.

Under a strategic agreement, Assay Designs will distribute approximately 3,200 of Abnova’s monoclonal antibodies to their US and Canadian customers.

Product Introductions

Varian introduced the Captiva NDLipids 96-well filtration plate for removing phospholipids from biofluids.

Gene Oracle launched the GeneIOS system, a software suite and reagents package for creating synthetic genes of up to 1 kb in size in a single day.

In October, 454 Life Sciences released the GS FLX Titanium series reagents and software, enabling individual sequencing reads with a Q20 length of 400 base pairs and a throughput of 400–600 million base pairs per run.

SoluLinK introduced the One-Shot ChromaLink Antibody Labeling Kit.

Caliper Life Sciences and DiscoveRx launched the PathHunter express Beta-Arrestin kits for use with its LabChip 3000 and EZ Reader to conduct GPCR assays.

Millipore released the Epidermal Keratinocyte 3D cell culture medium in partnership with CELLnTEC Advanced Cell Systems.

PerkinElmer launched GMP-compliant radiolabeling services for ADME research studies in October.

Sigma-Aldrich introduced the Imprint Methylated DNA Quantification Kit for epigenetic research based on technology licensed from Epigentek Group.