Company Announcements

Pioneer Hi-Bred, a DuPont business, and OligoCo (formerly Blue Heron Biotechnology) entered into a collaboration in January to develop a next-generation oligonucleotide synthesizer that provides high throughput and low error rates at a low cost.

Oxford Nanopore announced in February that it will commercialize its GridION and MinION scalable, nanopore-based DNA sequencers this year. A new model of versatile pricing will be employed. The USB memory stick–sized MinION is expected to retail for less than $900. The GridION’s initial cartridge is designed for real-time sequencing by 2,000 individual nanopores.

GigaGen is collaborating with Dolomite to develop a Droplet Merger Chip for massively parallel single cell genetic analysis utilizing electrostatic forces. As part of a license agreement with GigaGen, Dolomite will offer the technology later this year to research users.

Biospace Lab and the Centre for Advanced Biomedical Imaging at the University College London are collaborating for three years to develop novel molecular-imaging technologies for biomedical research applications.

In March, OpGen reached an agreement to raise up to $17 million in a new growth capital financing. New investors include Harris & Harris Group and Cross Creek Capital.

SAW Instruments formed a US subsidiary in Boston, Massachusetts, in March.

Fluidigm announced in March that Kenneth J. Nussbacher will not stand for re-election to its Board in May.

In March, Microlytic secured $3.5 million in additional venture financing.

A*STAR Institute of Microelectronics signed a research collaboration agreement in March with QuantuMDx. The agreement will leverage the Institute’s silicon-based nanowire technology.

In March, PerkinElmer granted Gen-Mark Diagnostics a license under its microfluidics patent portfolio.

Genalyte completed an $11.8 million Series B financing in March. Redmile Group and Claremont Creek Ventures were new investors.

In April, Luminex and Bio-Rad Laboratories extended their sales and distribution agreement to 2023 and added Luminex’s MAGPIX system to the agreement.

Product Introductions

In March, NanoString introduced for its nCounter system: the Plex2 Expression Array Kit, which increases the throughput of the system to up to 200 targets in up to four samples in a single tube; the Cancer Copy Number Assay Kit for analysis of 86 genes; and the Human v2 miRNA Expression Assay Kit with content from miRBase 18.

In April, ProteinSimple launched the Sally system for automated western blot analysis. It can perform 96 Simple Western blots in a single experiment.