The fusing of genomic stalwarts Invitrogen and Applied Biosystems into one entity won't be easy: in addition to meshing teams and infrastructure, the new company also has its customers to worry about.
"[They] have high expectations for both Invitrogen and Applied Biosystems, and we were determined to continue to deliver the same high-quality products and services to customers of both," says Mark Stevenson, president of Life Technologies.
Stevenson says that, for the foreseeable future, there will be no change in the way Invitrogen and Applied Biosystems customers interact with their vendors. Down the road, Life Technologies plans to release new reagents and systems that combine the vendors' offerings.
He adds that his focus will be to blend Invitrogen's chemistry know-how and Applied Biosystems' technology to make the most of the more than $300 million the company plans to spend on R&D for next-generation sequencing and regenerative medicine.
"We see more headroom and applications for [next-gen sequencing] so we will continue to develop and launch upgrades to the SOLiD system, new reagent solutions to -simplify genomic and transcriptome analysis with SOLiD, as well develop new systems based on single-molecule technology," he says.
With regard to regenerative medicine, Life Technologies intends to focus its efforts on expanding analysis tools and cell growth technologies.