Company Announcements

In January, Axela signed a North American distribution agreement with VWR for its dotLab system and reagents.

BioForce Nanosciences President and COO Kerry Frey was named president and CEO in January, and former CEO Eric Henderson was named to the newly created position of chief science officer.

OpGen appointed Noel Doheny CEO in January. He was formerly senior vice president of Molecular Diagnostics for Affymetrix.

Helicos BioSciences appointed Elisabeth Allison, PhD, a partner at ANZI Partners, to its Board.

VWR is marketing Mole Genetics’ Gene Mole in Europe.

Applied Biosystems established relationships with Geospiza and GenomeQuest to develop bioinformatics tools for use with its SOLiD System.

Nonlinear Dynamics entered into a distribution agreement with UVP for SameSpots analysis software.

Microchip Biotechnologies and Stanford University are developing a front-end microfluidic-based sample preparation system to generate template libraries for next-generation pyrosequencing.

Product Introductions

Alpha Innotech introduced the AlphaDigiDoc Pro imaging system, designed for labs with limited budgets.

Decision Biomarkers introduced the Avantra biomarker workstation and Max Biochip eight-plex cytokine immunoassay.

UVP introduced the BioSpectrum 800 Imaging System for 2D gel imaging and analysis, featuring an 8.3 megapixel image capture capability.

In February, Mole Genetics launched the GeneMole automated DNA extraction system in Europe at a price of €9,500 ($14,067). It is capable of running 1–16 samples at a time and sample volumes of 50 µl–200 µl.

454 Life Sciences released the 3K-Long Tag Paired End protocol for the Genome Sequencer FLX System and the Ligation Multiplex Identifier kit for the amplification and sequencing of up to 12 uniquely tagged samples together.

Fujifilm Life Science introduced three models of the FLA-9000 modular image scanner for radioisotopic, fluorescent, chemiluminescent and digitized imaging.

Sales/Orders of Note

Caliper Life Sciences announced that its 500th IVIS molecular imaging system was shipped in the fourth quarter of 2007.

In February, Luminex announced the placement of its 5,000th instrument.