Company Announcements

Akonni Biosystems and Chinese IVD company Righton entered into a commercial agreement in March under which Righton will sell Akonni products for nucleic acid purification and molecular diagnostics to researchers, clinical labs and hospitals in China. Akonni gained exclusive rights to sell Righton’s molecular diagnostic products outside of China. In addition, Righton made a $7.5 million equity investment as part of Akonni’s Series D fundraising, bringing total investments for the round to $13.9 million.

In March, QIAGEN licensed rights to exome research tool provider System Biosciences’ ExoQuick technology for research use. QIAGEN intends to use the ExoQuick technology in its precipitation-­based miRCURY products, complementing its portfolio of spin column­–based exoEasy and exoRNeasy product lines.

In April, Spark Holland announced an OEM agreement with Axel Semrau, a Spark distributor. Axel Semrau will brand a portfolio of Spark Holland instrumentation, pairing it with its CHRONOS software to create automated solutions, cobranded as CHRONECT Symbiosis. Spark technologies covered by the agreement include Flow Through Desorption (FTD) and the Symbiosis ULTRA UHPLC sample preparation system for SPE as well as consumables.

Product Introductions

In February, Porvair Sciences launched the UniqSeq ChIP-Seq library preparation kit, a highly sensitive kit especially designed for low abundant transcription factors that can be used for both qPCR and sequencing.

In April, Phenomenex launched the Strata-X-Drug B Plus SPE product for urine drug testing in clinical and forensic toxicology labs. It features Solvent Shielding Technology, which enables an enzyme hydrolysis to be carried out directly in the microplate well. It is available in a 96-well format.

In April, Genovis released GlycOCATCH. The first product in the company’s new protein purification product category, it is designed for fast, simple and specific purification of O-glycosylated proteins or peptides.

In May, BIOTECON Diagnostics launched the foodproof RoboPrep Fusion, a liquid handling robot combined with the Thermo Fisher Scientific KingFisher Flex for fully automated RNA/DNA extraction and PCR set-up. Designed for molecular food and veterinary diagnostics, it features a hands-on-time of 15 minutes per 96 samples. Also available are validated foodproof magnetic preparation kits for a broad range of parameters.

PG Instruments released in May the 8000 series, consisting of two models, a microwave digestion system designed to be compatible with the company’s  AA500, AFS420 and ICP5000 instruments.