Company Announcements

Nikon partnered with the Instituto Italiano di Tecnologia for the study and development of new methods in super-resolution fluorescence optical microscopy for oncology and neurodegenerative diseases.

Leica Microsystems entered into an agreement in November 2011 with the Max Planck Society and the German Cancer Research Center to develop gated super-resolution simulated emission depletion (STED) microscopy. Leica also gained a license to the technology. The new products will be launched in the first half of this year.

In November 2011, Hitachi High-Technologies agreed to distribute Park Systems AFMs in Japan.

Applied Precision, a GE Healthcare company, exclusively licensed in December 2011 patents from Yale University for Ring-TIRF (total internal reflection fluorescence) microscopy, which removes interference fringes and allows fast multiangle illumination to correct for chromatic differences and 3D illumination of the cell cortex. The product will be launched this year.

Revenue for the Carl Zeiss Microscopy business group grew 7% to €423 million ($588 million) in the fiscal year ending September 30, 2011, to make up 10% of company sales.

Product Introductions

Asylum Research introduced the Variable Field Module2 for its MFP-3D atomic force microscope (AFM) for application of magnetic fields to AFM experiments.

Olympus America announced it is now offering its microscopes with Andor Technology’s iXon EMCCD cameras, Revolution confocal systems and other hardware for spinning disk laser confocal microscopy.

Park Systems introduced in November 2011 the NX10 AFM as the flagship system for its new product line. It features an improved True Non-Contact Mode and advanced XYZ closed-loop scanning, which uses the Z position sensor to monitor the real-time extension of the Z scanner.

Carl Zeiss expanded its ZEN confocal laser scanning microscopy software to all of its light microscopy systems.

In November 2011, Life Technologies launched the FLoid Cell Imaging Station, which is designed to make fluorescence microscopy more accessible and is one-third of the cost of traditional systems.

Bruker introduced the Innova-IRIS integrated system for correlated AFM and Raman spectroscopic imaging. It is suitable for Tip-Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy research.

Anasys Instruments introduced the afm+ integrated AFM platform for Nanoscale Thermal Analysis, Scanning Thermal Microscopy and Transition Temperature microscopy.

For its 6000 ILM AFM, Agilent released an incubator perfusion cell sample plate, advanced force-volume spectroscopy capabilities and top-view video optics.