Company Announcements

In July, AsureQuality and Ubiquitome announced a collaboration for mobile molecular food safety and primary production testing.

In August, LGC appointed Sigma-Aldrich as the sole distributor of its off-the-shelf KASP Genotyping Assay and as a nonexclusive distributor of KASP MasterMix reagents, custom KASP Laboratory Validated Assays and custom KASP Designed Assays.

PositiveID raised $2.4 million in strategic financing in August.

SYGNIS named Nanodigmbio as a Chinese distributor, GeneWorks as an Australian distributor and LABGENE Scientific as a Swiss distributor.

Product Introductions

TwistDX introduced the TwistAmp isothermal Recombinase Polymerase Amplification kits, which can use standard PCR primers. Reactions take 10–40 minutes and can be multiplexed.

Bibby Scientific launched in June the Alpha Cycler 4 thermal cycler with four independent blocks.

Exiqon released the ExiLERATE LNA qPCR product portfolio, a complete sample-to-answer solution for real-time PCR analysis.

Transgenomic launched in July the ICEme Mutation Enrichment Kits for cancer research, with an initial menu of 17 clinically actionable exons/mutations for use as single mutations or in combination.

DuPont Diagnostics introduced the compact BAX System X5 for easy PCR detection for food applications. It is designed for lower volume, more affordable testing compared with the BAX System X7.

3M released the Molecular Detection Assay 2 – Listeria and – Listeria monocytogenes, the first of its line of next generation Molecular Detection Assays, featuring a streamlined workflow and new lysis chemistry.

In August, Bio-Rad Laboratories launched the ddPCR Supermix for Residual DNA Quantification for directly measuring host-cell DNA that contaminates biopharmaceutical products.

In September, Bioline, a Meridian Bioscience company, introduced the EPIK miRNA Panel Assays, developed in collaboration with MiRXES. The assays use SensiSMART technology with SYBR Green.

Analytik Jena introduced the Biometra TRIO thermal cycler, which replaces the TProfessional TRIO.

Canon BioMedical, a subsidiary of Canon, introduced the Novallele genotyping assay library and chemistry. This is the company’s first product for genetic research.

SYGNIS launched the SunScript One Step RT-PCR Kit, which performs both reverse transcription and PCR amplification in a single tube by using gene-specific primers.