Company Announcements

In January, Biognosys announced a Series C funding round, which will be used in part to establish US business development and service operations, based in Boston.

SCIEX and Singapore’s Bioprocessing Technology Institute announced a collaboration to advance biologics R&D, specifically the development of accurate and high-throughput methods for contaminant analysis.

In February, SCIEX announced an alliance with Children’s Medical Research Institute to equip the Australian Cancer Research Foundation International Centre for the Proteome of Cancer facility. The Centre will purchase SCIEX systems.

Agena Bioscience partnered with China’s DaRui Biotechnology to codevelop a menu of targeted, multiplex IVD tests for oncology and inherited diseases tailored to the needs of the Chinese market. Agena noted that China represents 20% of its revenues, and sales for its recently established Chinese subsidiary grew 50% last year.

In March, Agena Bioscience agreed to codevelop commercial tests with China’s CapitalBio Technology for agricultural applications, which will be available as certified services through CapitalBio.

In February, Waters welcomed the University of Copenhagen Department of Forensic Medicine’s Forensic Chemistry Laboratory into its Centers of Innovation Program.

In February, Protea Biosciences announced a collaboration with Protein Metrics.

Biodetech signed a patent licensing agreement and Cooperative Research and Development Agreement with the US Army Edgewood Chemical Biological Center for the Agents of Biological Origin Indentifier (ABOid) system. The company holds partially exclusive licenses to develop the technology for identifying microbes in food.

Product Introductions

Waters launched in December 2015 a 24-sample format of its GlycoWorks RapiFluor-MS N-Glycan Analysis Kit.

In January, Protein Metrics released its Intact Mass software for the characterization of intact therapeutic proteins.

In February, Biognosys introduced the Sample Preparation Kit Pro for protein extraction from 96 cell culture or plasma samples in one experiment.

In March, Advion released the ‘TIDES EXPRESS system for proteins and peptides analysis, combining an HPLC system with the extended–mass range expressionL MS.

Advion introduced the iASAP (inert Atmospheric Solids Analysis Probe) which enables ionization of liquid and solid samples for MS, eliminating sample preparation. Real-time reaction monitoring can be achieved by dipping the probe into the reaction mixture and inserting the probe into the APCI source of Advion’s expression MS. It begins shipping in May. The technology was developed at the University of Pennsylvania by Charles McEwen, PhD.