NEW YORK, June 27 - Monsanto has licensed the Rosetta Resolver gene expression data analysis system from Rosetta Inpharmatics, Rosetta said Wednesday.
Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed. The Resolver system, Rosetta's flagship product, is exclusively distributed by Agilent Technologies, based in Palo Alto, Calif.
In May, Merck acquired Rosetta for $620 million in stock, but said that Rosetta would continue to operate the Resolver business as a separate cost center. Rosetta has licensed its Resolver system to a number of pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, including GlaxoSmithKline, Biogen, Immunex, Paradigm Genetics, and Merck.
The Resolver system accepts data from a wide variety of expression profiling formats, including Affymetrix GeneChip and Agilent DNA microarrays, and applies proprietary error models to calculate statistics on the gene expression data. Rosetta, based in Kirkland, Wash., released version 2.0 of the system in the first quarter of 2001.
"The Rosetta Resolver system, which will empower us to conduct thorough and rapid analysis of our gene expression data, has comprehensive features and high quality statistics that can help us to quickly and efficiently develop products and solutions to achieve our goal," said Christine Karslake, director of business development for Monsanto, in a statement.