Company Announcements

ES Cell and GE Healthcare agreed in December 2014 to cross license their respective stem cell patents for the development of cellular assays and models derived from stem cells for use in drug discovery and toxicity screening.

SI BIO signed a distribution agreement in January with 2BScientific for the UK and Ireland.

Indi Molecular announced in December 2014 a codevelopment agreement with Sigma-Aldrich for its PCC (protein catalyzed capture) agent technology.

Sigma-Aldrich announced an alliance with Belgium’s VIB research institute focused on translational research in medicine, agricultural and industrial applications.

In January, Sigma-Aldrich’s Research business unit announced a gene-editing collaboration with the Institute of Molecular Genetics at the Czech Center for Phenogenomics for CRISPR technology.

Meridian Life Science opened an office in Beijing, China, in January.

As part of a research collaboration, Cellular Dynamics will reprogram Cord Blood Registry’s newborn stem cells from umbilical cord blood and umbilical cord blood tissues into iPSCs.

Thermo Fisher Scientific partnered with AstraZeneca for the use of CRISPR technology to validate new drug targets in preclinical models. From Thermo, AstraZeneca will receive RNA-guide libraries that target individual known human genes and gene families.

HTG Molecular announced in a January SEC filing that it raised more than $18 million.

Product Introductions

Affymetrix introduced in January the Axiom Porcine Genotyping Array and Axiom Equine Genotyping Array for applications in breeding and routine analysis.

Agilent Technologies launched the GenetiSure Pre-Screen Kit for screening aneuploidy and other genomic aberrations in the 5–10 Mb range from single cells in three- and five-day embryos.

In January, BellBrook Labs released a TR-FRET version of its Transcreener UDP Assay.

SGI-DNA, a Synthetic Genomics company, introduced the Gibson Assembly Ultra Kit for performing complex, large and multiple-fragment assemblies in a simple, two-step reaction.

Luminex introduced the xMAP Biothreat Toxin Panel for detecting and identifying six biotoxins.

Bioo Scientific released the MaxSignal Colistin ELISA Test Kit for screening for colistin in meat samples.

New England Biolabs introduced the Rapid PNGase F glycosidase, which removes N-glycans from antibodies and fusion proteins in 10 minutes or less. The technology contributed to the development of Waters’s GlycoWorks RapiFluor-MS N-Glycan Kit (see IBO 1/31/15).