Company Announcements

In January, WaferGen Biosystems formally opened its Malaysian subsidiary in Kedah, which will initially focus on R&D. WaferGen also entered into a contract manufacturing agreement with Malaysia-based Pentamaster.

Cepheid appointed Andrew D. Miller as senior vice president, CFO in April. He was previously vice president and chief accounting officer for Autodesk.

EnviroLogix and Ionian Technologies will develop, manufacture and market rapid tests for detecting genes or gene sequences to agricultural biotech markets.

In March, DRI Capital acquired for $10 million all future royalties generated by Applied Biosystems’ license for Nanogen’s minor groove binder technology (MGB).

Thermo Fisher Scientific will exclusively provide products used for gene expression research based on Nanogen’s MGB probe technology.

Under a co-exclusive agreement, Roche Applied Science will market and sell an RNA amplification product, to be released in the third quarter, based on NuGEN Technologies’ WT-Ovation technology.

NuGEN Technologies named Dr. Douglas A. Amorese vice president of R&D. He was most recently director of R&D for Agilent’s genomics group.

Product Introductions

NuGEN Technologies launched the WT-Ovation Exon Module.

Bio-Rad Laboratories introduced the 1000 Series thermal cycling platform consisting of the C1000 and S1000 systems, which offer multiple block formats, including a dual 48-well fast block that is gradient enabled.

Exiqon A/S released the miRCURY LNA miRNA PCR system for real-time PCR.

Cepheid’s 2007 revenues increased 48% to $129.5 million (see IBO 3/31/08). Product sales rose 41% to $116.5 million, of which Clinical, Biothreat and Industrial sales accounted for 52%, 35% and 15%, respectively. Biothreat sales decreased 15% and sales to Northrop Grumman/USPS represented 36% of total product sales. The company forecasts 2008 revenues of $182–$189 million.

Applied Biosystems released a line of reagents for streamlining the process of performing quantitative reverse transcription PCR in RNA-based research.

Applied Biosystems introduced the TaqMan Cells-to-CT Kit for real-time PCR workflows using cultured cells.

Applied Biosystems released the Quantifiler Duo DNA Quantification Kit for forensic labs.

Gene Express joined the Personalized Medicine Coalition in March.

Midsci introduced the MultiGene Gradient Thermal Cycler.

In April, Stratagene launched a new line of Brilliant II QPCR and QRT-PCR reagents.