Company Announcements

Precision System Science, reagent company Diagenode SA and Nippon Gene announced plans to develop an automated epigenetic system.

Claire M. Fraser-Liggett, PhD, and Steven St. Peter, MD, resigned from Helicos Biosciences’ Board in May.

Helicos BioSciences named Stephen P. Hall senior vice president and CFO in May. He was formerly CFO of TriPath Imaging.

ZS Genetics joined the Archon X Prize competition to sequence 100 human genomes within 10 days for less than $10,000 per genome. ZS Genetics’ system is based on transmission electron microscopy and atomic labeling.

Lab901 announced in April that it raised £3.55 million ($7.0 million) in a funding round led by Alliance Trust Equity Partners, a new investor.

Carestream Molecular Imaging partnered with LABREPCO to support and enhance sales of KODAK optical molecular systems.

Invitrogen was named the exclusive distributor of Sequenom’s MassARRAY systems and consumables in Central and South America.

Applied Biosystems and the Wellcome Trust Sanger are collaborating on a study of cancer genomics and aiming to increase sequence coverage by identifying one SNP for every 500,000 bases of DNA and by generating 20-fold genome coverage.

GWC Technologies appointed Biotron Healthcare its exclusive Indian distributor.

Under a supply and reseller agreement, Digilab Genomic Solutions will supply its HydroShear device to Applied Biosystems for sale with the SOLiD System.

Fluidigm appointed AME Bioscience and Witec AG as its exclusive distributors for the Nordic Region and Switzerland, respectively.

In May, Pacific Biosciences acquired “sequence by incorporation” technology from LI-COR Biosciences. LI-COR retained its intellectual property for the sequencing enzymes that were designed for sequencing by polymerase synthesis.

Product Introductions

SRU Biosystems released the BIND 384/1536 TURBO Reader and 1536-well biosensors for label-free detection.

ForteBio introduced the Octet RED System, based on BioLayer Interferometry, for label-free, real-time kinetic analysis of drug compounds.

In May, Applied Biosystems upgraded its SOLiD System to increase throughput to over six billion bases of sequence data per run and 240 million sequence tags per run.

Protein Forest launched the ProteomeChip System, which fractionates and concentrates proteins and peptides by parallel isoelectric focusing on chips.