Company Announcements

NorDiag sold its molecular diagnostics assets in May to DiaSorin for €7.6 million ($10.0 million) and changed its name to Norda. It will continue to sell its Magnatrix automated DNA purification systems.

Precision System Science reorganized its structure, effective July 1, setting up a Global Sales & Marketing Group, Production and Supply Management Group, and Corporate Management Group, headed by Kimimichi Obata, Nobuo Nagaoka and Jun Akimoto, respectively.

Horizon Technology named new distributors: Labicom for the Czech Republic, Boyut for Turkey and Axel Semrau for Germany.

Pressure BioSciences announced in July an exclusive distribution agreement for the Chinese forensics market with Yinzhou Police Equipment & Technology for its PCT product line and a nonexclusive agreement for the Shredder SG3 and associated consumables. The company also named BMN MSI a distributor for Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos and iScience Technology an exclusive distributor for Australia and New Zealand.

In July, Agilent Technologies named the University of Liverpool Centre for Genomic Research a Certified Service Provider for its SureSelect Target Enrichment System.

Product Introductions

MO BIO Laboratories launched in June PowerMag Soil and Microbial DNA Isolation Kits for purification using the epMotion and KingFisher systems.

Bioo Scientific released in July the NEXTflex DNA Sequencing Kit for Ion Torrent, which can be automated.

Illumina introduced the Nextera Exome and Custom Enrichment kits for targeted resequencing studies. The workflow can be performed in less than three hours and features 12-plex pre-enrichment sample pooling.

Illumina introduced in September the TruSeq Stranded mRNA and Total RNA Sample Preparation Kits for RNA sequencing, which utilize Ribo-Zero ribosomal RNA reduction chemistry.

In August, EMD Millipore launched PureGenome kits and reagents for library preparation, which feature two steps that can be performed in under two hours, followed a short enrichment step. The reagents are validated for the Illumina platform–compatible libraries.

Corning introduced in August the new Axygen IMAG handheld magnetic bead separation devices. The company also introduced a line of Axygen magnetic bead–based kits, including the AxyPrep Mag PCR Normalizer Kit.

Biotage released in August the EVOLUTE EXPRESS family of 96-well plates for polymer-based SPE, which employ a three-step protocol: load, wash and elute.

In September, Pacific Biosciences launched the MagBead Station for its PacBio RS system. The MagBead Station upgrade and kit enables sequencing of longer templates.