LSBC Bankrupt, Auctioning Mass Specs, HPLCs, Other Instruments

NEW YORK, May 3 (GenomeWeb News) - Large Scale Biology has obtained bankruptcy protection May 1 and has hired an auction firm to liquidate its 50,000-sqaure-foot facility, according to the company overseeing the auction.

Auctioneer firm Cowan Alexander said it will be auctioning MALDI-TOF mass spectrometers, liquid chromatographers and high-performance liquid chromatographers, and other general biotech instruments.

The auction house said the instruments, which can be seen here, "will be available for a bargain."

The auction will take place May 18 in Vacaville, Calif.

As GenomeWeb News reported in January, LSBC was delisted from the Nasdaq exchange in late December 2005 and had shuttered its operations, including its proteomics subsidiary, Predictive Diagnostics.

Call to the company today were met with a message stating that, effective Dec. 23, 2005, Predictive Diagnostics and Large Scale Biology have "ceased operations. Calls to this number will not be returned."

In 2004, LSBC sought to auction proteomics instruments in Germantown, Md., after it shut down its fee-for-service proteomics contract business as part of a repositioning.