Matthews, NC 5/9/13; Matthews, NC 5/13/13; Uppsala, Sweden 5/13/13—CEM announced that its European Patent No. 1,491,552 covering microwave-assisted solid phase peptide synthesis was upheld in an oral proceeding at the European Patent Office (EPO), following a word change for clarification. CEM stated that the opposition proceeding was initiated by Biotage in an attempt to revoke […]

Los Angeles, CA 5/10/13; Los Angeles, CA 5/31/13—OpenGate Capital, which last year acquired Thermo Fisher Scientific’s Laboratory Workstation business (see IBO 10/31/12), has filed suit against Thermo in the US District Court for the Central District of California. OpenGate alleges that Thermo “engaged in a scheme to induce the sale of the Hamilton Entities to […]

Seattle, WA 5/30/13; Washington, DC 5/20/13—NanoString Technologies has filed a registration statement with the SEC for a proposed IPO of its common stock. The company’s nCounter Analysis System digitally quantifies the activity of up to 800 genes simultaneously in one experiment using a novel barcoding chemistry. Research applications include gene expression, single-cell gene expression, miRNA […]

New York, NY 5/21/13; Washington, DC 5/21/13—Reuters has confirmed that Sigma-Aldrich and Roche partnered to bid for the purchase of Life Technologies (see IBO 4/15/13, 4/30/13), with Roche planning to acquire Life’s sequencing business. In Life’s SEC proxy filing for the acquisition (in which Strategic Party A is Sigma and Strategic Party B is Roche, […]

The calendar-year first quarter proved challenging for some major publicly held instrument and laboratory product companies. In general, industrial end-markets were soft, US and European academic and government spending remained constrained, and a weaker yen hurt sales and profitability. In addition, Bruker and PerkinElmer experienced unexpected events related to operational issues and weaker-than-expected sales in […]

The Cyto 2013 conference for flow cytometry took place this year in San Diego, California, from May 19–22. Put on by the International Society for Advancement of Cytometry, the conference drew over 1,600 registrants, according to preliminary estimates, compared with 1,521 last year, when the conference was held in Leipzig, Germany. Seventy-two vendors participated in […]