Company Announcements

Illumina announced in October that the Human Heredity and Health in Africa Initiative selected it to develop an array for African genomic research.

Meridian Bioscience announced in October that its Life Science segment will exit biopharma enabling services, which represented $2­–$3 million in annual revenue.

Fiscal 2016 sales for the year ending September 30 for Meridian Bioscience Life Science increased 4.6% to $51 million, or 26% of revenues. Within the segment, sales of Molecular Components were flat at $21 million, while sales of Immunoassay Components rose 8.0% to $30.4 million. Life Science Chinese sales totaled $4.1 million, with Immunoassay Components accounting for 76%.

ATCC announced in October a strategic partnership with contract testing services provider BioAgilytix to develop new and custom cell-based assays. ATCC also took a minority stake in BioAgilytix.

Emulate announced in October a strategic collaboration with the Lawrence J. Ellison Institute for Transformative Medicine of USC to use its Organs-on-Chips technology for translational cancer R&D. The company also announced a strategic collaboration with LabCorp, which seeks to establish Organs-on-Chips as a new preclinical testing platform. The first application is focused on the Kidney-Chip.

In October, Emulate expanded its Series B financing with an additional $17 million in equity funding, bringing the total amount raised in the Series B round to $45 million.

Edinburgh Research & Innovation, the commercialization arm of the University of Edinburgh, announced in October a license agreement with the life science business of Merck KGaA for technology to fluorescently label peptides with minimal interference with peptide structure.

In October, Santa Cruz Biotechnology opened a sales office near Toronto, Canada.

Mercia Technologies announced in October a £1 million ($1.2 million) follow-on investment in synthetic biology company Oxford Genetics. Mercia holds a 47% stake in the company, having invested £2.2 million ($2.7 million).

In October, New England Biolabs (NEB) signed a reagent supply agreement with AmpTec, a manufacturer of synthetic long RNAs and functional mRNAs. NEB will manufacture and supply enzymes for in vitro transcription and capping of RNA.

In November, ERS Genomics licensed its CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing intellectual property for use in engineering model organisms to Knudra Transgenics. Knudra will use the license to engineer C. elegans and D. rerio (zebrafish) to build custom models and develop related products.

In November, Betin Pharma announced that it will distribute INDIGO Biosciences’ nuclear receptor assay kits in Europe.

OriGene Technologies announced in November a multiyear strategic agreement with China-based EdiGene to develop genome-wide knockout cells for commonly used lab cell lines (see below).

In November, MilliporeSigma entered into a set of agreements with drug discovery and development partnership company Evotec. Evotec will provide screening services for MilliporeSigma’s collection of genetic reagents, such as CRISPR and shRNA libraries.

In December, Desktop Genetics and LGC announced the awarding of funding from the UK’s SynbiCITE project to develop screening and validation tools for functional genomics, cell line engineering and synthetic biology.

Genome engineering technology company Muse bio named Dr. Kevin Ness as CEO and a Board member in December. Founding CEO Ryan Gill will become CSO. Dr. Ness was previously cofounder, CTO and COO of 10X Genomics.

In December, Agilent Technologies announced a partnership with Transcriptic to develop novel synthetic biology solutions. Transcriptic will add multiple Agilent Genomic product lines for mutagenesis and cloning to the protocol library within the Transcriptic robotic cloud library. The first product, QuikChange Lightening, will accelerate the generation of multiple mutants for large protein function projects.

DNA2.0 announced in December that it has changed its name to ATUM.

Product Introductions

In November, Irvine Scientific introduced PRIME-XV Mouse Hematopoietic Cell Basal Medium, a serum-free basal medium supporting self-renewal of mouse hematopoietic progenitors while maintaining their differentiation potency.

Under an agreement with EdiGene (see above), in November, OriGene Technologies introduced the Knockout Cell Lysates, which  can be used to validate antibodies for specificity or used as negative controls for Western blot analysis. They are sold in a kit format.

MilliporeSigma introduced in December the MILLIPLEX MAP Human High Sensitivity cytokine panel for faster, more economical assays, calling it “the first 384-well kit for use with the Luminex FLEXMAP 3D platform.”

In December, Miltenyi Biotec launched its REAfinity portfolio of recombinant antibodies, optimized for flow cytometry and designed to improve research reproducibility.