Company Announcements

WaferGen Biosystems signed exclusive distribution agreements for its SmartSlide Micro-Incubation System with INBIO for Australia, ScienceWerke for Singapore and with Westburg for the Benelux Systems.

BioNanomatrix, a developer of whole genome imaging and analysis technology, raised $5.1 million in Series A funding in March.

Oxford Nanopore Technologies, formerly Oxford NanoLabs, secured investments of $20.1 million.

Alpha Innotech’s 2007 revenues rose 16% to $15.3 million (see page 12), as it instituted direct sales in the US.

In April, ProGenTech, a developer of a nucleic acid amplification systems, raised $21 million in Series C financing and named Trevor Hawkins, PhD, chairman and CEO.

Axela named three new board members: Dave Lemus, CFO of MorphoSys AG; David Giddings, president and CEO of Digilab; and Bill Clarke, MD, CEO of Cellectar.

Caliper Life Sciences appointed Peter F. McAree senior vice president and CFO in April. He was previously vice president of Finance.

Under a marketing agreement, BioTrove and OSI Pharmaceuticals will combine their respective RapidFire assay services and Integrated Lead Development Platform.

Helicos BioSciences entered into a cancer molecular diagnostics collaboration with City of Hope.

Microchip Biotechnologies entered into a license agreement for GE Healthcare’s microfluidics patents.

Product Introductions

BioForce Nanosciences launched a Surface Patterning Service.

KSV Instruments introduced the SPR-Navi, a surface plasmon resonance spectroscopy system for in situ determination of surface confined molecular interactions.

In March, Biotage AB’s Pyrosequencing AB subsidiary launched the PyroMark Q24 System, a 24-well format system for low-throughput epigenetic studies.

SRU Biosystems introduced the Cartridge Reader, its entry-level system based on 8-and 16-well biosensors.

Farfield introduced the AnaLight 4D interferometer for measuring the order within lipid bilayers.

In April, Alpha Innotech released the plug-and-play RED personal gel imager system.

Carestream Molecular Imaging introduced KODAK Molecular Imaging Software 5.0, a cross-platform digital imaging software, featuring improved field uniformity.

VisEn Medical launched the FMT 2500 small animal fluorescence imaging system, which can generate quantitative tomographic data in vivo and coregister data with imaging readouts from other modalities.

Translume released a new line of fused silica microfluidic chips.