16-Feb-2004 - Germany's KGaA has announced plans to sell off its laboratory distribution business VWR International and operate as a smaller, higher-margin business focused on pharmaceuticals, chemicals and liquid crystals.
12-Feb-2004 - Fisher Scientific International has swooped on two companies providing tools for life sciences companies in a move designed to boost its product range for research laboratories and biopharmaceutical production.
09-Feb-2004 - Swiss-American laboratory instrument company Mettler-Toledo saw its fourth-quarter revenues climb 7 per cent to $370 million (€290m) although the weak dollar accounted for a large proportion of the increase.
09-Feb-2004 - Laboratory equipment company Thermo Electron managed to raise its revenues in the fourth quarter of 2003 in the face of sluggish investment in R&D by the pharma and biotech industries, but believes there are signs of an upturn in spending.
09-Feb-2004 - Fisher Scientific, the US-based science and laboratory products group, hinted earlier this week that it may be looking to make another acquisition, despite its prediction of a period of consolidation in the wake of its $714 million (€562m) takeover of Perbio last year.
05-Feb-2004 - LION bioscience has delayed the publication of its third-quarter results after a change in its accounting procedures that will see licence revenues spread across the term of the contracts, instead of booked in the quarter they are signed.
03-Feb-2004 - A cell culture vessel designed by Taiwanese company CESCO Bioengineering can produce the same amount of cells in a single 500ml bottle as would be made in 20 or more conventional roller bottles, according to the company which is introducing the device to the North American market.
22-Jan-2004 - General Electric's €8.1 billion acquisition of the UK's Amersham was approved by the European Union yesterday, after it concluded that the deal would not create a monopoly in Europe's medical imaging market.
21-Jan-2004 - UK-headquartered NextGen Sciences has formed an alliance with Germany's Protagen aimed at developing 'biochips' that can contain thousands of functional proteins for use in drug discovery.
20-Jan-2004 - Amersham Biosciences has responded to competition in the marketplace for purifying tagged proteins with the launch of Ni Sepharose, a new affinity chromatography medium.
19-Jan-2004 - Affymetrix and liquid-handling specialist Caliper Technologies - now renamed Caliper Life Sciences - are collaborating on ways of automating genomics research carried out using microarrays.
16-Jan-2004 - A microarray developed by Protometrix has been used to characterise the interactions between an antibody-based drug and the proteome - a snapshot of all the proteins produced by a cell.
16-Jan-2004 - Applied Biosystems has launched a new product, based on the combination of a new set of reagents with a software package, that promises to speed up genotyping studies carried out on the firm's 3730 and 3730xl analysers, first introduced in 2002.
15-Jan-2004 - Labcaire of the UK is upgrading its entire range of laboratory safety cabinets by coating them with an antimicrobial treatment designed to minimise the risk of cross-contamination.
13-Jan-2004 - Colony counting and picking are well-recognised as one of the most boring, repetitive and error-prone jobs in the lab, and there has been a strong desire to automate the process.
09-Jan-2004 - A collaboration between Switzerland's Genedata and Bayer of Germany has led to new way of developing assays for antibacterial activity and accelerate the search for novel antibiotic classes.
09-Jan-2004 - The Automation Partnership has launched a new robotic system designed to take the legwork out of extracting proteins made in microbial or insect cells.
07-Jan-2004 - Indian companies may be making great strides in capturing international market shares for bulk pharmaceutical ingredients and generic drugs, but to date they have not made a great impression on the laboratory tool market.
24-Dec-2003 - Instrumentation company MOCON has unveiled plans to acquire Germany's Paul Lippke Handels, which markets process and laboratory test systems to companies in the pharmaceutical, food and packaging industries.
16-Dec-2003 - Ultrasonic Scientific will debut a new ultrasonic analyser for titration measurements and analysing small-volume chemical reactions at next year's Pittcon exhibition.
09-Dec-2003 - Radleys Discovery Technologies, a UK-based specialist in parallel chemistry, has introduced a platform to speed up the purification process after synthesis of multiple compounds.
04-Dec-2003 - Filtration and purification specialist Pall has reported a 12.5 per cent hike in first-quarter sales to $374 million (€310m), with life sciences putting in a strong showing, up 15.5 per cent to $152 million.
02-Dec-2003 - Over the last few years, researchers involved in high-throughput screening have been seeking out the use of their expensive reagents by developing assays that use smaller and smaller volumes, helped by sophisticated automation technologies.
20-Nov-2003 - Active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) specialist Cambrex has appointed a new president and chief executive charged with improving sales and profit growth at the firm. Gary...
19-Nov-2003 - Agilent Technologies has reported a net profit of $13 million or 3 cents a share in the fourth quarter of its financial year, ended 31...