Company Announcements

NanoString Technologies announced a three-year collaboration with the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard to investigate molecular networks involved in immune response and other important biological processes.

Caliper Discovery Alliances & Services announced a comarketing agreement with medicinal-chemistry services firm Prestwick Chemical.

Protea Biosciences entered into a distribution and product development agreement with Gelcompany, which includes the right to distribute certain Gelcompany products in North America.

Fluidigm raised $18.2 million in November 2009 through a private placement.

Gyros AB named DI Biotech a distributor for South Korea.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences and Inspur Group, a computing-platforms firm, announced a project to develop a third-generation genome-sequencing instrument.

In November 2009, publicly held ART Advanced Research Technologies, a Canadian maker of molecular-imaging products, filed for bankruptcy. The company emerged from court-supervised restructuring in December 2009 with Dorsky Worldwide as its sole shareholder.

Seahorse Bioscience appointed Cell-Bio Biotechnology as its exclusive distributor for Taiwan.

Sequenom named two Board members: Kenneth F. Buechler, PhD, president, chief scientific officer and co-founder of Biosite; and David Pendarvis, senior vice president of Organizational Development, global general counsel and secretary at Resmed.

Product Introductions

Metrohm Autolab introduced the dual-channel TWINGLE surface plasmon resonance system.

Biometra, an Analytik Jena company, released the compact UVsolo TS gel documentation system.

Fluidigm launched the BioMark IFC Controller MS for automatically priming and loading the 48.48 Dynamic Array and Digital Array integrated fluidic circuits.

Caliper Life Sciences released Living Image 4.0 software for the IVIS in vivo imaging systems, featuring advanced spectral unmixing tools.

AVEGENE introduced the LIAS Slite 140 Gel Documentation System.

Sales/Orders of Note

ForteBio announced in October 2009 total shipments of 200 instruments and more than two million biosensors.

Fluidigm announced in December 2009 that its BioMark System for Genetic Analysis, which was introduced in November 2006, surpassed 100 cumulative units in the field.