Company Announcements

Biosearch Technologies licensed access to its BHQ, CAL Fluor and Quasar patents to DuPont Qualicon in October 2010 and is now manufacturing Scorpions primer oligonucleotides for DuPont.

In November 2010, MDxHealth licensed its methylation-specific PCR (MSP) technology to Takara Bio for the scientific research market.

QuantaLife closed $17.2 million in Series B financing in December 2010. New investors included Merieux Development.

Idaho Technology licensed its SYBR Green technology to Bio-Rad Laboratories for use in PCR reactions and high-resolution melting.

Olink Genomics changed its name to Halo Genomics in January.

Cepheid’s 2010 revenues increased 25.2% to $206.9 million. Clinical, Industrial, Biothreat and Partner sales accounted for 79%, 9%, 11% and 1% of revenues, respectively. Adjusted operating loss was $5.3 million. In 2011, revenues are forecast to be $245–$255 million.

Product Introductions

NuGEN Technologies introduced the Ovation WGA FFPE and Ovation RNA-Seq FFPE Systems in November 2010, calling them the first sample preparation solutions for transcriptome profiling with FFPE tissue.

NuGEN Technologies released the Ovation Prokaryotic RNA-Seq System through a limited-release program.

QuantaLife launched the Droplet Digital PCR System, which uses microfluidics to partition each sample into between 20,000 and millions of 1 nL drops, each of which contains a separate PCR. It reads 48 samples per hour.

In November 2010, Life Technologies introduced the first kit to facilitate digital PCR on its OpenArray Real-Time qPCR System. It provides up to 48 assays per plate, for a total of 144 digital answers in a three-hour run.

Life Technologies released Custom Plus TaqMan Assays for RNA and Copy Number Variation Studies and expanded its TaqMan portfolio with a new set of more than 180,000 predesigned mouse copy number assays.

Life Technologies introduced the Applied Biosystems VetMAX-Gold BVDV Detection Kit, the first US Department of Agriculture–licensed real-time PCR test to detect bovine diarrhea virus.

Olink Genomics released six Selector gene panel kits for targeted re-sequencing.

Bibby Scientific introduced the TC-PLUS range of thermal cyclers, which are a combination of Server and Satellite units and have a four-year warranty.

In February, Bio-Rad launched the EpiQ chromatin analysis kit, a real-time PCR assay for the rapid quantitative assessment of chromatin structure in cultured cells within six hours.