Inside Instrumentation

(1) Several companies have recently expanded operations and opened new centers. Dionex opened a Center of Excellence with a training facility and applications and demonstration laboratory in Bannockburn, Ill., at the new headquarters for its North American sales and service organization (shown). Similarly, Agilent Technologies launched new Life Science & Chemical Analysis Centers of Excellence at the company's Santa Clara, Calif., headquarters and in Bangalore, India. Agilent also expanded existing product demonstration centers in Paris; Manchester, England; and Waldbronn, Germany. Another center is planned for late 2007 in Little Falls, Del. Meanwhile, CEM Corp., a provider of microwave instrumentation, is opening a microwave chemistry division in India in partnership with Niulab Equipment Co.

(2) The JEM-1400 from JEOL is a 120-kV high-resolution transmission electron microscope (TEM) that can be configured for either high-contrast imaging or scanning TEM analysis. The sample stage has a tilt range of ±70^o to allow 3-D tomography. The microscope's new operating system, TEM Center, allows different modes of control depending on the user's level of expertise and also allows remote operation and image observation via Internet, cell phone, or PDA. The system can save customized operating environments for multiple users. The first system in the U.S. will be installed at Georgia Institute of Technology.

Illumina, a San Diego-based gene analysis company, will buy Solexa in a stock swap valued at $600 million. Solexa, based in Hayward, Calif., and Cambridge, England, has developed a genetic analysis system that uses a method known as sequencing by synthesis. The technology will join Illumina's portfolio of bead-based DNA genotyping arrays. The deal is expected to close by the end of the first quarter of 2007.

Product development collaborations between instrumentation firms and other partners have recently been on the rise.

Fluidigm, a South San Francisco-based developer of nanoscale fluid-control systems, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have received an NIH grant to develop a microfluidic chip for collecting in situ X-ray diffraction data. The chip will allow protein crystals to be screened at a synchrotron so the best ones for diffraction studies can be identified without being handled.

Also in the protein area, Bruker Daltonics and Australia's HealthLinx, a diagnostic products company, will develop and patent biomarkers discovered under a previous 12-month collaboration. The biomarkers are related to complications in pregnancy and were found through Bruker's ClinProt protein mass spectrometry platform. The partners have divided up marketing rights to any resulting diagnostic tests.

In another MS-related deal, Waters Corp. and Advion Biosciences, Ithaca, N.Y., are integrating Advion's TriVersa NanoMate technology with Waters' Synapt High Definition MS system. The combination, they say, offers the ease-of-use and reproducibility of nanoelectrospray chip-based sample introduction and high-sensitivity ion mobility-based separation.

Meanwhile, Affymetrix and its collaborator Iconix Biosciences, both in California, have launched the ToxFX analysis suite for toxicogenomic studies of drug candidates and other compounds. It combines Iconix' automated analysis with Affymetrix' GeneChip arrays and allows full toxicological analyses to be completed within a few days.

Lastly, Applied Biosystems and Eagle Research & Development, Boulder, Colo., are developing a single-molecule detector. Eagle's prototype technology, which uses a nanopore array, identifies and quantifies molecules based on their electronic charge profiles. The companies anticipate its use in identifying proteins and nucleic acids, measuring protein-protein and protein/small-molecule interactions, and sequencing DNA.