Company Announcements

Japanese firm JSR signed a business alliance agreement with antibody supplier Medical & Biological Laboratories in March and acquired a 33% stake in the company for ¥4.5 billion ($47.6 million). Areas of codevelopment include latex bead reagents and epigenome-related reagents.

Vitro Biopharma expanded its agreement with distributor Neuromics to include the drug discovery and regenerative medicine markets.

In May, CYTOO named Marc Le Bozec CEO. He was formerly CFO and CEO of Cellectis.

MiTeGen signed collaboration and license agreements in May with EMBLEM for thin-film crystallization plates for protein crystallization, including exclusive distribution rights to EMBLEM’s CrystalDirect plants.

In June, Horizon Discovery closed its Series C funding round, raising $10.5 million, for a total of $29.1 million. The company forecasts sustainable profitability beginning in the second half of 2013.

Cellular Dynamics expanded its MyCell Products line, offering access to a number of human disease models and licensing genetic engineering patents from Life Technologies and Sigma-Aldrich.

Product Introductions

Life Technologies released Vector NTI Express Designer for custom vector and genetic construct design and synthesis. It features an integrated gene synthesis service, sequence optimization tools and an electronic database.

EMD Millipore introduced in May the Magna ChIP HiSens chromatin immunoprecipitation kits for input amounts of 10,000 to one million cells or cell equivalents. They feature a single buffer system used for sonication, ChIP and wash steps.

In June, EMD Millipore released PluriSTEM Human ES/iPS Medium for the routine expansion of human embryonic and induced pluripotent stem cells in feeder- and serum-free conditions with less frequent feeding and cell culture times.

Gen9 launched in May GeneBytes DNA constructs, or gene fragments, manufactured at lengths of 1,000–3,000 base pairs long.

Corning released the FloWell 2W Plate, a six-well plate designed for continuous fluid perfusion technology for the controlled, directional feeding of cells for up to 72 hours.

In June, Enzo Life Sciences introduced the Cyto-ID Hypoxia/Oxidative Stress Detection Kit, which is a multiplex assay kit that uses two membrane-permeable fluorogenic probes, and the Mito-ID O2 and pH Sensor Probes assays.

Beckman Coulter launched the VersaComp Antibody Capture Bead kits, which allow researchers to utilize their test reagents when setting color compensation.

DNA2.0 released the Electra Vector System, a PCR-free, one-tube universal cloning system.