Company Announcements

Pall acquired GeneSystems, a provider of microbiological detection systems for process monitoring, in September.

Invitrogen launched a patent-licensing program in September. New England Biolabs, QIAGEN GmbH and Kirkegaard & Perry Laboratories licensed technology covering the random prime amplification of nucleic acids.

Takara Bio granted Promega a license to make, use and sell LA-PCR–related products, marking the 22nd licensee for the technology.

Amending their 2005 agreement, Roche Diagnostics extended its rights to sell and distribute Exiqon A/S’s Universal ProbeLibrary on a coexclusive basis and gained coexclusive rights to the Universal ProbeLibrary for development of RealTime-ready qPCR assays.

As the first licensee in Applied Biosystems’ PCR Probe Manufacturing Licensing Program, Integrated DNA Technologies gained a license to sell dual-labeled probes for use in the 5’ Nuclease process.

In November, Applied Biosystems announced a collaboration with Asuragen and the Critical Path Institute’s Predictive Safety Testing Consortium to develop a predictive gene signature panel to screen potential therapeutics for toxic effects in preclinical samples.

QIAGEN and the Chinese Academy of Sciences are collaborating to develop new molecular testing solutions to detect food-borne pathogens.

Product Introductions

In September, Applied Biosystems established the TaqMan Service Provider Program for RNA expression analysis with nine initial service providers.

Applied Biosystems launched the MicroSEQ Mycoplasma Detection System for contaminant detection in biopharmaceutical manufacturing.

In October, Applied Biosystems introduced the TaqMan OpenArray Genotyping System for an end-to-end genotyping workflow of less than eight hours.

Applied Biosystems released the Taqman PreAmp Pools, which are preconfigured sets of reagents for gene expression analysis of limited samples.

BioTrove introduced the Pathways prevalidated qPCR assay panels for its OpenArray NT Cycler.

Sigma-Aldrich introduced the TransPlex Whole Transcriptome Amplification (WTA2) technology for amplifying total RNA from a variety of sample tissue sources.

Bibby Scientific released the Techne TC-3000X personal thermal cycler.

Bibby Scientific launched the compact Techne TC-3000G gradient thermal cycler.

Agilent introduced the Stratagene Gradient Cycler, stating that it gives researchers access to a complete workflow for end-point PCR from a single supplier.