Fluorotechnics suspended trading of its shares on the Australian Stock Exchange on October 1.

Fluorotechnics announced in October that it sold Gel Company for $150,000 in cash.

OpGen completed a $17 million Series B equity financing in September, led by jVen Capital.

In October, NanoString Technologies appointed Barney Saunders, PhD, chief commercial officer. He previously served as COO of IntegenX.

IntegenX received a first-phase, $2.8 million contract from the US Department of Defense’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency to develop an Integrated Sample-to-Sequence system for rapid detection and identification of genetically engineered bacteria and viruses.

Shrink Nanotechnologies exclusively licensed rights to use and sublicense Corning’s modular microfluidic system for at least eight years.

In October, NanoInk announced a $65 million financing led by Lurie Investments, which will be used to convert outstanding debt to equity and provide working capital.

SonoSite announced that VisualSonics’ third-quarter revenue grew 30% organically (see IBO 5/31/10).

Under a collaboration agreement announced in October, Cygnus Technologies will develop, manufacture and supply assay kits optimized for application-specific immunoassays run on Gyros AB’s platform.

In October, Life Technologies announced that it partnered with BGI to offer whole human genome resequencing and that BGI acquired 27 SOLiD 4 Systems.

Product Introductions

SAW Instruments GbmH launched the sam5 biosensor instrument for real-time biomolecular interaction and kinetic studies. It utilizes surface acoustic wave technology and five independent sensor elements.

Illumina announced in October that it is discontinuing sales of its Genome Analyzer IIe and will lower the price of the Genome Analyzer IIx to under $300,000.

Illumina announced the HiSeq 1000 sequencing system, a single flow cell version of the HiSeq 2000 for lower throughput. It is expected to deliver in excess of 100 Gb of data per run using paired 100 base pair reads. Shipping will begin in the first quarter of 2011.

In November, Life Technologies launched the 5500xl SOLiD Sequencer, developed and manufactured by Hitachi High-Technologies. It features the Exact Call Chemistry option for greater than 99.99% average single-read accuracy, a rapid-scan fluorescence detection system for an initial delivery of 20-30 Gb/day of DNA sequence, and the ability to run one to six independent lanes with two FlowChips. The company also announced that the SOLiD 4hq (see IBO 4/15/10) and SOLiD PI (see IBO 5/31/10) programs were combined. The SOLiD PI will be replaced by the affordable 5500 SOLiD.