Company Announcements

Spark Holland appointed Separations Analytical Instruments and Sercolab as value-added partners for the Benelux region in fall 2010.

Spark Holland named iBiosys Solutions as a value-added partner for the UK and Ireland.

Roche and Fluidigm entered into a copromotion agreement in October 2010 for their respective sequencing and amplicon sample preparation platforms.

Caliper Life Sciences entered into a comarketing agreement with Illumina in October 2010 for its LabChip XT library preparation instrument and LabChip GX analytical quality control platform.

Sage Science signed a comarketing agreement with Illumina in October 2010 for its Pippin Prep system, an automated gel technology for library size selection.

Agilent announced in December 2010 that its SureSelect Target Enrichment System now supports 454 Life Sciences’ sequencing platform, in addition to Illumina’s Genome Analyzer and Life Technologies’ SOLiD platforms.

Product Introductions

Caliper Life Sciences introduced the LabChip GX assay, which is optimized for the quality control steps that assess the concentration and size distribution of next-generation sequencing libraries. The company also launched the LabChipXT for size selection of sheared libraries.

Bertin Technologies released the Precellys 24-Dual tissue homogenizer and cell lyser for soft and hard tissue samples from 1 mg to 5000 mg.

Agilent introduced the SureSelectXT Target Enrichment System, which features sequencing library preparation and gDNA preparative reagents with the SureSelect target enrichment system.

Illumina launched in November 2010 the TruSeq sample preparation kits for DNA, RNA and small RNA applications and the TruSeq Exome Enrichment Kit, which enable large-scale exome studies using a pre-enrichment pooling approach with plate-based processing.

Epigentek introduced the EpiSonic Multi-Functional Bioprocessor 1000 for sample preparation in next-generation ChIP and DNA sequencing.

Milestone introduced the benchtop UltraWAVE system for single reaction chamber digestion. It can digest up to 15 samples simultaneously.

Genevac released the EZ-2 Elite evaporator, featuring a scroll pump, which is designed to remove high boiling point solvents and deliver enhanced solvent recovery.

Porvair Sciences introduced the Development Microlute SPE microplate, which provides a choice of up to 12 different phases and sorbent loadings (10–100 mg) in a 96-well plate and is suited to method development.

Phenomenex launched Strata-X-Drug B, an SPE sorbent designed and quality control tested for drugs of abuse. It comes with a 45-day guarantee.