Company Announcements

ChromaCon granted Knauer a semi-exclusive license in fall 2011 for the Contichrom lab-scale preparative chromatography unit for use in discovery, process development and small-scale production.

Bruker disclosed in a fall 2011 SEC filing that it acquired Michrom Bioresources for $3.8 million (see IBO 2/28/11).

LabLogic Systems appointed SI Healthcare as a representative for South Korea.

In November 2011, JSR and BIA Separations entered into a strategic partnership, which includes JSR taking a minor equity position in BIA. The firms started a joint marketing and sales effort and R&D collaboration in the area of downstream purification for manufacturing vaccine, DNA and antibody-based medicines.

In January, Phenomenex announced the establishment of direct sales and service in Sweden through its office in Denmark.

Product Introductions

EMD/Merck Millipore introduced the PharmPrep P 100 RP18e Sorbent for preparative LC, which enables higher productivity in small peptide purification processes. The firm also introduced the Eshmuno HCX cation exchange resin, which maintains a high binding capacity over a wide range of pH and salt concentrations.

In November 2011, BAC and GE added FactorVII/FactorVIIa bioprocess affinity chromatography resin to GE Life Sciences’ line of custom-designed media.

BAC and Life Technologies launched in February a range of POROS CaptureSelect affinity columns, which combine their respective CaptureSelect affinity ligand technology and POROS resin. The analytical columns are designed for real-time pharmaceutical process monitoring. The initial product line consists of the POROS CaptureSelect LC-kappa and LC-lambda, IgG-Fc, igM and HAS columns. Four column sizes are available.

Biotage launched the Biotage ZIP line of value-priced flash purification cartridges, which are compatible with all manufacturers’ flash systems. Packed with Biotage KP-SIL brand silica, they are available in sizes from 5 g to 120 g.

Biotage released in January the SNAP Ultra high-performance flash chromatography cartridges, which utilize HP-Sphere spherical silica and are available in sizes from 10 g to 340 g.

In January, Waters and Ireland’s National Institute for Bioprocessing and Training released the GlycoBase 3+ Database, calling it the world’s first database for glycan analysis by UPLC. They are comarketing the product.

In February, Agilent extended its range of sub-2 µm, 300 Angstrom biocolumns, introducing the ZORBAX 300SB-C3 and 300-Diphenyl 1.8 µm columns for reversed-phase biomolecule separations. The ZORBAX family now includes 13 phases for small-molecule applications and four phases for large-molecule separations.