Public funding sources in the EU and Australia are establishing programs to assist biotechnology projects that are trying to negotiate the so-called “valley of death”—the funding gap that lies between academic grants and industrial licensing or venture capital backing. The European Investment Fund entered into a €8 million ($10.6 million) partnership with Belgium’s University of […]

Atomic Spectroscopy Bruker AXS, following the acquisition of Quantron (see IBO 9/15/06), released “Brukerized” versions of Quantron’s arc-spark instruments around the first of the year. The Q6 Columbus is a laboratory system, as is the Q8 Magellan, which is priced at about $65,000. The Q8 Coronado (based on the Magellan) is an automated system for […]

London, England 3/12/07—Linde has sold BOC Edwards’s vacuum and semiconductor businesses to private equity firm CCMP Capital for €685 million ($901.1 million). BOC Edwards is a supplier of vacuum systems to analytical instrumentation companies, among other industries. “This is the start of a new independent era for BOC Edwards in which we can focus on […]

Arc/spark is a specialized optical emission spectroscopy (OES) technique that is strongly associated with the analysis of metals. In principle, these instruments can be used with nonconductive materials if they are prepared by grinding and forming a mixture with powdered graphite. There are also dedicated systems with specialized electrodes for the analysis of liquids, generally […]

In February, Brazilian president Lula da Silva launched a policy for the development of biotechnology that could make the country a biotech leader within 15 years. The policy is designed to foster collaboration between industry and scientists and to create incentives for biotech scientists. This plan will add support to preexisting innovation initiatives (see IBO […]

Aliso Viejo, CA 3/8/07—Carl Zeiss Microimaging has acquired Clarient’s ACIS and Trestle Instrument Systems business assets and intellectual property for $11 million in cash and an additional $1.5 million based on post-closing conditions. In 2005, revenues for Clarient’s Technology Group, which includes fee-per-use and system sales, rose 16% to $8.7 million, including $4.4 million in […]

San Diego, CA 3/13/07; Santa Clara, CA 3/13/07; San Diego, CA 3/1/07—A jury from the US District Court for the District of Delaware decided that Illumina infringed on, and induced infringement on, claims of five Affymetrix patents. The jury determined a proper royalty rate of 15% and awarded $16.7 million in damages to Affymetrix for […]

Company Announcements In January, eGene entered into a distribution agreement with Fisher Scientific Canada for the HAD-GT12 system. eGene entered into a three-year distribution agreement with Gene Company for China. Under a value-added reseller agreement, Picometrics SA will provide Agilent Technology’s capillary electrophoresis system coupled with its laser induced fluorescence detector. In February, Advanced Analytical […]

IonSense named KR Analytical as the European distributor for its DART MS ion source in November 2006. Bruker Daltonics and HealthLinx will file a joint patent cooperation treaty for the biomarker candidates for pregnancy complications discovered under their existing collaboration. Bruker Daltonics retains marketing rights to the blood test in Europe, UK, Africa and South […]