Industry news in brief - week 47

LabTechnologist.com brings you a round up of recent industry news, with developments at Advanced Instruments, Aperio, Applied Biosystems, Beckman Coulter, Bruker, Invitrogen, Roche, TCS Cellworks and Thermo Fisher Scientific.

Advanced Instruments has acquired Mart Microbiology for an undisclosed amount. The acquisition will expand Advanced Instruments product line to include Mart's Anoxomat systems that create custom environments for anaerobic bacteria cultivation to enable the diagnosis of post-operative infection in hospitals and clinics, or bacterial cultivation in food microbiology labs.

"Mart Microbiology is a perfect fit for our company; it is the clear market leader in this developing technology and compliments our company's market presence globally. The experience gained as Anoxomat's U.S. distributor gives us a high degree of confidence in making this strategic move," said John Coughlin, CEO of Advanced Instruments.

Aperio has exclusively licensed pattern recognition software from Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) to enable pre-processing of tissue samples during digital pathology studies

The Genetic Imagery Exploration (Genie Pro) software will act as a pre-processing engine for various tissue scoring algorithms, such as those used when trying to identify tumour regions in digital immunohistochemistry (IHC) slides.

"Incorporating a progressive analysis tool like Genie Pro into the Aperio product suite enables us to provide our customers with a next generation image pattern recognition technology for digital slide images that requires little training to create compelling results," stated Dirk Soenksen, CEO of Aperio.

"We view image analysis and pattern recognition capabilities as an important driver for the adoption of digital pathology, and are excited about adding Genie Pro to our suite of image analysis algorithms."

Applied Biosystems has signed up TriLink BioTechnologies to provide its customers with reagents for its recently launched SOLiD gene sequencing system.

Under the agreement, TriLink will provide the custom dye-labelled oligonucleotides that are used during the DNA sequencing process.

"Working with best-in-class suppliers like TriLink has enabled us to develop the most robust, accurate, and highest-throughput genetic analysis platform available to help our customers take advantage of the emerging applications for next-generation DNA sequencing," said Kim Caple, vice president for Applied Biosystems' next-generation sequencing business.

Beckman Coulter has agreed to acquire Dako Denmark's research flow cytometry instrumentation business for an undisclosed amount.

Dako's cytometry instrument business has a workforce of nearly 200 employees, to whom Scott Garrett, Beckman Coulter's CEO, said: "I want to welcome the talented people transferring to us from Dako. We see significant opportunities for Beckman Coulter in flow cytometry and continue to expand our investment in this fast-growing market segment."

Flow cytometry is used to analyse cells in blood and other fluids for diseases such as leukaemia, lymphoma and HIV in both research and diagnostic settings.

"We are enthusiastic about the opportunity to add Dako's MoFlo XDP high-performance sorter, the gold standard for cell sorting, and the highly capable nine-color CyAn research flow cytometer to our existing portfolio of cytometry instruments," said Garrett.

Bruker Daltonics is to sell Proxeon's EASY-nLC nanoscale liquid chromatography system as part of its LC/MS (liquid chromatography / mass spectrometry) portfolio.

While no financial terms of the agreement were disclosed, it is understood that the

OEM agreement will initially start in Europe.

"Combining our range of proteomics MS products with the novel nanoLC system from Proxeon takes proteomics analysis to a new level in terms of performance, reliability and ease-of-use, answering the increasing demand for integrated solutions," said Dr Alexander Harder; director of Product Management at Bruker Daltonics.

Invitrogen has licensed its 'second-generation' RNAi technology to RXi Pharmaceuticals subsidiary, CytRx, for designated target genes in all human therapeutic categories.

"Licensing this broad technology from Invitrogen is part of our strategy to continually enhance our proprietary rxRNA compounds for therapeutic applications," said Dr Tod Woolf, CEO of RXi.

Terms of the agreement were not disclosed; however it is understood to cover Invitrogen's Stealth technology.

"We see the use of our Stealth RNAi technology in therapeutics as a natural next step in Invitrogen's efforts to be at the cutting edge of in vivo gene regulation," said Amy Butler, Invitrogen's vice president of gene expression profiling.

Roche Applied Science has entered into an exclusive world-wide licensing agreement with ACEA Biosciences for the supply and distribution of ACEA's real-time cell assay technology.

The technology is designed for a number of applications from short term kinetic analysis to cell proliferation, cytotoxicity and cell migration assays.

Financial details were not disclosed, but the deal appears similar to that struck between Roche and 454 Life Sciences that ended up in 454's acquisition earlier this year.

"After completing our product portfolio in DNA/RNA analysis with 454 and NimbleGen, the ACEA technology will be an essential cornerstone to strengthen and further extend our product portfolio in cell analysis," said Manfred Baier, Head of Roche Applied Science.

"We are convinced that ACEA´s platform products for cell based assays will form a new industrial standard for life science cell-analysis."

TCS Cellworks has announced a bilateral distribution and support agreement with Cell Culture Service (CCS) that will see CCS distribute and support the entire TCS product range in Germany with TCS doing the same for CCS' cell-based Princess Instant Assays in the UK.

"We want to provide a fast and convenient technical support service to our German customers. For this reason we decided to collaborate with CCS, who can represent our products in a competent way," said Dr James Otter, manager of TCS Cellworks.

Thermo Fisher Scientific has expanded the reach of its laboratory informatics systems in to Venezuela and the Caribbean with the appointment of Conroval as an authorised sales centre for the regions.

Controval will promote Thermo Scientifics laboratory information management system (LIMS), chromatography data systems (CDS), pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic and spectroscopy software and spectral libraries.

"This new partnership underscores our commitment to our customers based in Latin America and the Caribbean. Controval serves the Venezuelan market providing them with integral solutions in instrumentation and industrial automation," said Oliver Faidi Cortés, director of Latin America and Caribbean sales for informatics at Thermo Fisher Scientific.

"Furthermore, Controval has an established sales organization consisting of seven sites spread throughout Venezuela and has been a long-term distributor of Thermo Scientific process instruments. This pedigree makes Controval an ideal partner capable of extending our presence to this vital region."