Company Announcements

Transgenomic licensed Dana-Farber Cancer Institute’s Cold-PCR technology, including the exclusive right to commercialize it combined with Sanger sequencing and the right to use it for mitochondrial DNA analysis.

Cepheid named Nicolaas Arnold executive vice president of Worldwide Commercial Operations in October 2009. Most recently, he was regional vice president for Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics in Northwest Europe.

Eurogentec SA obtained a license under Applied Biosystems’ Probe Manufacturing License Program for the manufacture, marketing and sale of dual-labeled probes for use in the 5’ Nuclease process alone and in kits.

Kapa Biosystems licensed Idaho Technology’s reagents or methods using SYBR Green I technology and melting curve analysis for real time PCR.

Takara Bio licensed Roche Diagnostics’ melting curve analysis technology and SYBR Green techniques for use in instruments in Japan and in kits worldwide for research applications.

TriLink Bio Technologies signed a distribution agreement with tebu-bio SA for Western Europe for its CleanAmp modified nucleic acid products.

Nacalai USA will distribute TriLink BioTechnologies’ products in Japan, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan.

VWR International will distribute Kapa Biosystems’ PCR reagents in North America.

Applied Biosystems and Idaho Technologies entered into a broad cross-licensing agreement, covering hardware, software and reagents, including patents related to the 5’ Nuclease process and the use of SYBR Green I in PCR reactions.

Product Introductions

Applied Biosystems, a Life Technologies company, introduced the AmpFlSTR Identifiler Direct, Identifiler Plus and NGM PCR Amplification Kits for direct amplification of database samples in forensic labs.

Bio-Rad Laboratories released the Iscript RT-qPCR Sample Preparation Reagent for rapidly isolating total RNA and enabling reverse transcription and real-time PCR directly from cell lysates.

NuGEN Technologies introduced the Applause3’-Amplification System, a single-tube solution for microarray gene expression studies on Affymetrix cartridge arrays.

Thermo Fisher Scientific released the Thermo Scientific Verbatim High Fidelity DNA Polymerase kits, featuring sufficient reagents for 200–1000 reactions.

Agilent introduced the AffinityScript One-Step RT-PCR Kit for end-point RT-PCR, featuring fusion enzyme-based technology.

In January, Idaho Technologies launched high-volume kits for food-borne pathogen detection, which feature 160 reactions per kit, a simplified protocol and a competitive price.