According to the results of IBO’s Fall 2012 Business Climate Survey, expectations for near-term instrument and laboratory product sales have hit their lowest point since spring 2009 (see graph, page 6). Twenty-four percent of respondents expect instrument and lab product sales to decline industry wide over the calendar-year fourth quarter 2012 and first quarter 2013. […]

Washington, DC 9/28/12; Washington, DC 10/3/12—Singulex, a provider of immunoassay technology for measuring single-molecule changes in biomarkers, has filed with the US SEC for an IPO. The company intends to raise $86.3 million. In 2011, the company’s revenues grew 405% to $24.8 million, with cardiovascular disease (CVD) monitoring services accounting for 78% of revenues, life […]

Newark, DE 10/1/12; Tulln, Austria 10/1/12—SDIX has agreed to sell its Food Safety and GMO businesses to food safety diagnostic firm Romer Labs for $13.5 million. The Food Safety business provides the RapidChek lateral flow test strips, phage-based enrichment systems and CONFIRM immunomagnetic confirmation tools for the detection of pathogens. The GMO business includes test […]

Company Announcements Great Holdings and KFP Partners acquired SpectrAlliance from Expo Technologies in March and renamed the company Prozess Technologie. Advanced Photonix entered into a value added reseller agreement in April with Automation and Control Technology for its T-Gauge measurement system. Process NMR Associates and Quantum Tessera Consulting entered into a strategic partnership in May. […]

Development of a new type of preventive cancer vaccine is generating funding for biotechnology firms and hope for new therapies. The first such vaccine to come to market was Dendreon’s Provenge, which won FDA approval in 2010 for the treatment of metastatic prostate cancer and is customized for each patient. The new approach seeks to […]

Company Announcements In August, BIA Separations announced a cooperation agreement with the Centre for Bio Separations Technology at India’s VIT University. Product Introductions Advion introduced in June the affordable and easy-to-use Chip-Mate ESI chip based on a nano-LC ion source. The company also released a fit-for-purpose smaller array ESI Chip with 25 emitter nozzles. Knauer […]

Carlsbad, CA 10/8/12—Life Technologies has acquired cancer bioinformatics firm Compendia Bioscience for an undisclosed amount. Compendia Bioscience’s oncology data, including mutation profiles, gene expression data and cellular biomarkers, are used by pharmaceutical companies to identify new gene targets for drug discovery and development. “Compendia is highly regarded by its customers as a preeminent source of […]

Company Announcements Under a May collaboration agreement, Affymetrix’s QuantiGene ViewRNA In Situ Hybridization Tissue Assay will be automated on Leica Microsystem’s BOND RX staining platform for research applications. In June, Affymetrix announced a research collaboration licensing agreement with Massachusetts General Hospital to codevelop new cancer biomarker tests using its QuantiGene ViewRNA Assay platform. Affymetrix expanded […]

On September 28, French President François Hollande announced that, despite reductions for other ministries in the 2013 budget, the Higher Education and Research Ministry will receive a 2.2% funding increase to nearly €23 billion ($29 billion), or €26 billion including funding from other ministries. The budget for research grants will increase 1.2% to €7.86 billion, […]

Company Announcements In June, STARLIMS acquired its Asia Pacific distributor, STARLIMS Australasia. Global Helix opened an office in Japan in June and selected Filgen as its exclusive distributor for the country. NextBio and the Cancer Care Institute formed a strategic partnership in June focused on the clinical use of genomics. Certara named the University of […]