Darmstadt, Germany 3/3/09; Boca Raton, FL 3/3/09—AppliChem GmbH and Akron Biotechnology have merged, with Akron Biotech taking over AppliChem’s operations in the Americas on March 2 and adopting the AppliChem name. AppliChem offers biochemicals and reagents. Akron Biotechnology manufactures stem cell culture products. Dr. Claudia Zylvberberg will remain president and CEO of AppliChem.

New York, NY 3/12/09—Enzo Biochem has acquired substantially all of the assets of Assay Designs for $12.2 million in cash. Assay Designs provides kits and reagents for the detection and quantification of small molecules and proteins that are important in inflammation and immunity, oxidative and cellular stress, steroid and hormone biology, cell signaling, and bioenergetics. […]

St. Louis, MO 3/13/09—Sigma-Aldrich has acquired Sigal, its primary distributor in Chile, and formed Sigma-Aldrich Quimica. Terms were not disclosed. “We experienced 20% sales growth in Latin America in 2008 alone, and we believe our expanded presence in Chile, which will integrate sales, marketing and distribution, provides a solid base for consistent growth in the […]

According to China’s Vice Heath Minister Chen Wenjun, the nine departments cooperating under China’s newly approved Food Safety Law will be headed by the Health Ministry (HM). In addition to coordinating the activities of the nine departments, the HM will deal with food safety emergencies, including food safety monitoring and evaluation. Food manufacturers will be […]

Edman degradation is a process for protein sequencing first discovered by the Swedish biochemist Pehr Victor Edman in 1950. The technique is characterized by cycles. In a full cycle, the N-terminus of a given peptide is labeled with the reagent phenylisothiocyanate, forming a cyclic compound. Under acidic conditions, the labeled amino acid is cleaved from […]

Company Announcements BioTrove announced a research collaboration with Constellation Pharmaceuticals. Under a coexclusive distributor agreement, Cisbio Bioassays will offer BioTrove’s RapidFire MS screening service as a label-free detection method for assay development and drug screening. NextGen spun out its automation and software business in December 2008 to form eXeTek, which is led by two former […]

The American Chemistry Council (ACC) has reduced its forecast for US chemical output in 2009. In December 2008, the ACC predicted a 3.1% decline, excluding pharmaceutical chemicals, which has now been revised downward to an 8.7% decrease. Total US chemical production is expected to decline 5.7% in 2009, after falling 3.5% last year. US production […]

Increases in National Health Service spending and other government funds for translational research has lead UK institutes to focus on moving medical research into the clinic more quickly. England is facing competition for medical research and clinical trials from the Asia-Pacific region. According to the Centers for Medicines Research, the number of patients enrolled in […]

Nearly half of life science companies plan to focus on “breakthrough products and niche markets” in order to mitigate R&D risk, according to a survey by Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu and the Economist Intelligence Unit. The survey is based on responses from 360 life science industry executives from healthcare services (23% of respondents), pharmaceutical R&D (22%), […]