Company Announcements

BioDot agreed in March to comarket Quantiscientific’s A2 Micoarray System.

Protagen announced in April a partnership with Scienion, which will produce protein microarray batches for clinical validation of Protagen’s biomarker panels. The companies also plan to jointly evaluate new platforms for multiplex analytics and codevelop new approaches.

In September, Scienion agreed to distribute Maine Manufacturing’s FAST protein array products, including the complete FAST Slide product line.

In May, NanoInk’s NanoFabrication Systems Division named the Research Institute of Biomolecule Metrology as a Japanese distributor.

RayBiotech and the University of Oslo agreed to collaborate for antibody-based sample analysis services.

Arrayjet appointed Kyongshin Scientific a South Korean distributor in June.

In June, gene expression analysis service provider Plexpress and Phalanx Biotech announced a strategic alliance for the OneTRAC service, which will be offered by Plexpress in Europe and by Phalanx in the US and Asia.

In July, Oxford Gene Technology received two EU-funded clinical research grants totaling €3 million ($4 million). The firm will provide high-throughput genomic analysis for the five-year EU Life-threatening Infectious Disease Study. For the three-year PATHSEEK program for clinical microbiology, it will design sequence enrichment methods and compare sequencing platforms.

Agilent announced in August the receipt of US Patent No. 8,232,055 for claims for measuring copy number changes in genomic DNA, covering both one-color and two-color assays using obligonucleotide probes and samples with high-sequence complexity. The patent covers both basic and clinical research.

In August, Affymetrix signed an agreement with Singapore-based PathGEN Dx, which will develop in vitro diagnostic kits for pathogen detection using its PathChip, a contract manufactured GeneChip microarray.

Product Introductions

In May, Agilent introduced the SurePrint G3 Human Gene Expression v2 Microarray, with probes designed using the Broad Institute’s human reference catalog of large intergenic noncoding RNAs and the latest mRNA content from the National Center of Biotechnology Information RefSeq gene database.

Scienion launched in May a new version of its sciFLEXARRAYER S1 for the noncontact arraying of DNA and proteins, the production of cell transfection arrays, loading of biosensors and the preparation of MALDI targets. It features an increased throughput and capacity.

In July, QuantiScientific introduced the A2 Oligo-Link-it Slide for the rapid development of multiplex immunoassays through a simple hybridization step.