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LabTechnologist.com brings you its periodic round up of industry news, with developments at Bruker, Codon Devices, Invitrogen, Luminex and Thermo Fisher Scientific.
Bruker Bioscience has opened a new applications, demonstration and customer training centre for its Chinese customers in Beijing.
The new centre includes sample preparation areas and laboratory space equipped with the latest systems from the company including NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance) spectrometers, various mass spectrometry MS systems, x-ray diffraction and fluorescence systems, FT-IR (fourier transform infra red) systems and SEM instruments.
"This enhanced training and demonstration capacity in Beijing plays a key part in our plans to provide the best technical support for our rapid growth in China," said Werner Schittenhelm of Bruker BioSpin
"Our commitment to the Chinese scientific and industrial community is further emphasized by this major investment in a state-of-the-art demonstration, training and support facility here in Beijing."
Codon Devices has been awarded a $1.5m (€1.05m) grant by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to develop an integrated microfluidics platform to reduce the cost and complexity of building complex DNA fragments.
"Funding from this initiative will enable us to develop a new generation of rapid, automated systems for construction of longer, more complex DNA sequences," said Brian Baynes, president of Codon Devices.
"By integrating this technology with our BioFAB Production Platform, we will make these new tools available to our customers and partners and accelerate critical applications such as drug discovery and development of renewable energy systems."
Invitrogen is no-longer the exclusive distributor for Blue Heron Biotechnology's custom gene synthesis services.
In mid-December 2006, the companies announced a strategic development and distribution relationship that saw Invitrogen investing in synthetic biology company Blue Heron in exchange for exclusive worldwide rights to distribute the company's synthetic genes.
However, the company's have announced that the agreement has now become a co-exclusive distributor agreement with Invitrogen still able to supply Blue Heron's GeneMaker technology to its pharmaceutical and life science customers.
Terms of the updated agreement were not disclosed.
Luminex has reached a settlement with Rules Based Medicine (RBM), which was spun-out of Luminex in 2002, over alleged breaches of licensing agreements.
Luminex has received a cash payment of $12.5m in exchange for the resolution of the dispute and the retirement of Luminex's remaining stock ownership in RBM. In addition, RBM will gain certain additional licensing rights from Luminex.
Thermo Fisher Scientific has been selected by the China Doping Control Center (CDCC) to supply analytical instruments and software for its anti-doping program during the 29th Olympic Games in Beijing.
The company has supplied a range of instrumentation to CDCC with a range of analytical instrumentation, including two DFS Sector Field GC/MS (gas chromatograph / mass spectrometry) systems, a Delta V isotope ratio mass spectrometer (IRMS) and four triple-quadrupole TSQ Quantum Access LC/MS (liquid chromatograph / mass spectrometry) systems.
"We are greatly honoured to have the opportunity to participate in the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games," said Lew Rosenblum, president of Thermo Fisher Scientific China.
"Support for the Olympics embodies our corporate commitment to make the world cleaner, safer and healthier. We have great confidence that with the CDCC's analytical expertise and Thermo Scientific instrument, software and consumables solutions, the doping control testing program for this year's Olympics will be successful."
