In May, Affymetrix opened a manufacturing facility in Singapore. ChannelNewsAsia reports that the facility will manufacture 30% of the company’s products and has a staff of 124.

Affymetrix appointed John C. Batty CFO and executive vice president in June. He previously served as senior vice president of finance and CFO of Credence Systems.

In July, Affymetrix launched the European Cytogenetic Research Initiative, a collaboration with the University of Nijmegen, the University of Tübingen and the NHS Regional Genetics Laboratory to identify the specific causative mutations in mentally disabled children.

Affymetrix formed a five-year strategic alliance with Children’s Research Institute.

Oxford Gene Technology (OGT) licensed its “Southern array patents” to Aushon BioSystems for the manufacture and sale of oligonucleotide microarrays and for services.

OGT licensed Ocean Ridge Biosciences its “Southern array patents” for expression and microRNA profiling services.

OGT licensed its “Southern array patents” to Applied Microarrays for the fabrication, marketing, distribution and manufacture of custom arrays for third parties.

In July, OGT appointed Dr. Tim Cook, formerly executive director of Isis Innovation, to its Board.

Illumina certified Integragen SA as a service provider for GoldenGate and Infinium genotyping technologies.

In July, Illumina announced a collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania’s Institute of Translational Medicine and Therapeutics and the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute’s Candidate-Gene Association Resource Consortium to develop a customized chip for vascular disease.

Agilent licensed Kreatech Biotechnology BV’s labeling technology to optimize its array-based CGH (Comparative Genomic Hybridization) platform for DNA and formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tissue samples.

Kreatech agreed to supply components to NuGEN Technologies for its FL-Ovation cDNA Fluorescence Module, a fragmentation and labeling system for one- and two-color microarray analysis, thus enabling the availability of NuGEN’s Ovation products to Agilent platform users.

The firm febit biotech GmbH filed suit against Codon Devices, alleging infringement of US Patent No. 6,586,211 covering the use of microarrays for synthetic gene production. Codon Devices filed a complaint for declaratory judgment, stating that it is not infringing and that the patent is invalid and unenforceable.