Company Announcements

Sequenom named William Welch senior vice president of Diagnostics in January. Most recently, he was senior vice president and COO at Monogram Biosciences.

Tecan became the exclusive North American distributor of Attana’s biosensor instruments and assays.

In January, Caliper Life Technologies partnered with Seegene to enable Seegene’s multiplex diagnostic assays to run on its LabChip DX platform. Outside the US, the SeePlex assays will be marketed and distributed in a preferred partnership for use with the LabChip DX through Seegene’s distributors. The companies will comarket the LabChip Dx and multiplex diagnostic content.

Beckman Coulter Genomics partnered with Vitrology to offer biosafety testing services.

NanoString Technologies appointed J. Wayne Cowens, MD, as chief medical officer in February. He was previously with Genomic Health.

Product Introductions

Fluidigm introduced the FR48.48 Dynamic Array, a reusable bio-chip for SNP genotyping. Each chip can be used up to five times and can produce results for 48 samples across 48 assays. Fluidigm also released the IFC Controller WX, a device for fast loading and cleaning of the Array.

Cambridge Research & Instrumentation, part of Caliper Life Sciences (see IBO 12/15/10), launched the affordable Nuance TRIO multispectral imaging system for brightfield fluorescence multicolor protein analysis, featuring a simplified interface. It fits on any microscope with a camera mount.

Cell Biosciences released the FluorChem M MultiFluor system for quantitative detection of multicolor fluorescent Western blots and the MultiFluor Western Blotting kits. Chemiluminescent, colorimetric and UV-excited gels and blots can also be imaged on the system.

Caliper Life Sciences launched the LabChip Dx system for developing molecular diagnostic tests. Designed to perform electrophoretic separations for analyzing multiplex PCR products, it enables simultaneous analysis of up to ten different analytes in a single sample.

In January, Life Technologies announced the SOLiD FlowChip for the SOLiD DNA Sequencer. It runs as few as one lane containing up to 96 samples or as many as 12 lanes for more than 1,000 samples, while maintaining the same overall cost per run.

Illumina introduced the MiSeq personal sequencing system, which is priced at less than $125,000 including computer and sample preparation. It provides flexibility to optimize run conditions to suit particular applications and performs single and paired-end runs with read lengths of up to 2 x 150 base pairs. Shipping begins in the summer.

NanoString Technologies released the Mouse miRNA Expression Assay Kit for its nCounter Analysis System for performing multiplexed profiling of over 600 murine and murine-associated viral RNAs in a single tube.