Company Announcements

Fluidigm announced in November 2012 a lawsuit in California District court against NanoString Technologies for false advertising, unfair competition and unlawful trade practices in relation to an advertising campaign.

BioMérieux entered into a strategic agreement in November 2012, giving it exclusive rights to Quanterix’s Simoa technology for clinical labs and industrial applications. Quanterix will develop a new instrument and bioMérieux will develop multiplex assays for the platform.

Quanterix closed an $18.5 million Series C financing. New investors included bioMérieux, which took a $15.3 million equity stake, and In-Q-Tel.

Helicos BioSciences filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in November 2012.

In December 2012, NanoString Technologies completed an issue of $15.3 million Series E Preferred Stock.

Product Introductions

Thermo Fisher Scientific launched the MYECL Imager for one-touch image capture and analysis of protein and nucleic acid gels and Western blots.

HTG Molecular Diagnostics introduced the EDGE system for automated nucleic acid extraction–free gene expression results from formalin fixed paraffin embedded tissue and other sample types. It measures mRNA and miRNA simultaneously and allows for multiplexing of up to 47 genes per well.

Pacific Biosciences released in October 2012 a software upgrade for its PacBio RS High Resolution Genetic Analyzer for the automatic detection of the most common types of bacterial methylation and the performance of methyltransferase recognition motif analysis.

Pacific Biosciences announced the XL release for the PacBio RS, featuring new chemistry and software, for read lengths that average 5,000 bases, up from 3,000 bases.

Fluidigm introduced the High-Precision 96.96 Genotyping integrated fluidic circuit (IFC), the 192.24 Gene Expression IFC, and the FLEXsix Gene Expression IFC, which incorporates six 12×12 partitions that can be organized in any configuration in up to six separate runs.

BioNano Genomics launched the Irys System for genome mapping. The instrument uses the IrysChip to uncoil and confine long DNA molecules in Nanochannel Arrays, where they are uniformly linearized in a highly parallel display for high resolution, single-molecule imaging.

Life Technologies introduced in November 2012 the IonAmpliSeq Community Panels, which are designed in collaboration with leading scientists in a specific disease area who select gene content that is then verified and made available to the 13,500-member Ion Community.

Roche launched new GS FLX+ software for improved long-read shotgun sequencing performance on the GS FLX+, enabling the delivery of one million reads with accuracy and length comparable to Sanger-based methods.