Company Announcements During fiscal year 2008, Applied Biosystems discontinued the manufacture of the 433A Peptide Synthesis and the Procise Protein Sequencing systems, but will continue to provide support for existing systems for five years. Oxford Nanopore Technologies announced in August an exclusive agreement to develop and commercialize nanopore technologies developed at Harvard University, the University of California Santa Cruz and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. BioForce Nanosciences licensed its scientific applications technology to Aspera, including the ViriChip, Chip-on-a-Tip and Cell Well systems, and took a 19% equity interest in Aspera. The transaction reduced BioForce’s cash expenses by $500,000 per year, or 20%. BioForce Nanosciences announced a collaboration with the University of Albany’s College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering. Axela entered into a cardiac research agreement with John Hopkins University School of Medicine. Helicos BioSciences named president and COO Steve Lombardi CEO in August. Helicos BioSciences promoted Bill Efcavitch, senior vice president of product development, to chief technology officer, in August. Fluidigm named Millennium Science as its exclusive distributor for New Zealand and Australia, and Bio-Gene Technology as its exclusive distributor for Hong Kong. Single molecule detection firm Quanterix closed the second tranche of its Series A round in August, bringing total Series A financing to $15 million. In August, the National Human Genome Research Institute awarded more than $20 million in grants to develop sequencing technologies, including $5.1 million over three years to Illumina for the development of a 10 gb Pyrosequencer for the “$100,000 genome.” Digital pathology firm BioImagene appointed Dr. Ajit Singh CEO effective October 6. Most recently, he was CEO of Siemens Healthcare’s Image and Knowledge Management business. Product Introductions Roche Applied Science released the MagNA Pure LC 2.0 System in August for the isolation of nucleic acids. Denator AB released the Stabilizor T1 for the instant stabilization of tissue samples. Cambridge Research & Instruments launched the Maestro EX In Vivo Imaging System, an entry-level system. Caliper Life Sciences introduced the IVIS Kinetic preclinical in vivo imaging system for real-time observation. deltaDOT launched the deltaTITER, a one-hour baculovirus titration system. GE Healthcare released a immunogenicity software package for the Biacore T100 system.