Company Announcements

Fluidigm established a Chinese subsidiary in January.

In May, Fluidigm and the Broad Institute established a research center for the development of research methods and discoveries in mammalian single-cell genomics.

Aushon BioSystems entered into an exclusive North American distribution agreement with Fisher Scientific in February.

In April, Sequenom purchased Helicos BioSciences’ US Patent Application Serial Nos. 12/709,057 and 12/727,824 (Methods for Detecting Fetal Nucleic Acids and Diagnosing Fetal Abnormalities) for $1.3 million.

Sequenom extended its supply agreement with Illumina (see IBO 8/15/11) to five years, ending in July 2016.

In April, IntegenX acquired SV Corp., a GE Healthcare Bio-Sciences subsidiary, which brings to the company an intellectual property estate related to capillary electrophoresis, separation, sample preparation and separation matrix. IntegenX now supplies capillaries and matrix to the over 100 existing users of the MegaBACE sequencers.

In April, Luminex expanded its Life Science and Biodefense Groups with increased investments.

Sony DADC BioSciences opened in May a new US office in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

In May, OpGen entered into a collaboration with In-Q-Tel to develop a high-throughput sequence and genome-mapping pipeline for microbial genome analysis.

Oxford Nanopore Technologies raised $50.8 million in funding in May via a private placement.

Dolomite announced in May a collaboration with LioniX for developing and fabricating microfluidic devices and systems. LioniX will also distribute Dolomite products.

Product Introductions

Bio-Rad Laboratories introduced the V3 Western Workflow, a portfolio of products for the immunoblotting workflow that leverages stain-free imaging technology and shortens the process to one day.

Intavis launched the modular MultiPep RSi five-in-one peptide synthesizer.

Luminex launched in April the FlexScript LDA gene expression assay for use with the FLEXMAP 3D instrument for assaying up to 500 genes per sample.

Roche released in April the GS GType TET2/CBL/KRAS and RUNXI Primer Sets for genetic variation detection in four human genes using the 454 GS Junior Sequencer.

GE Healthcare launched the ImageQuant LAS 500 for imaging of chemiluminescent Western blots, fluorescent proteins, DNA gel stains and white light imaging of colorimetric stains and markers.

In May, Agilent introduced the nScope eMRI preclinical imaging system, featuring an improved interface, optimized packages and redesigned workflow.