NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) — Nanotechnology shop Lumera has spun out a company that will compete in the proteomics tools market, Lumera said yesterday.
The company, Plexera Bioscience, has become a wholly owned subsidiary of Lumera and will serve as the operations unit of Lumera's bioscience business that it started in 2006.
Plexera will focus on providing “tools, content, and methods to simplify and accelerate proteomic discovery for therapeutic antibodies as well as predictive biomarkers,” Lumera said.
Plexera’s products include the ProteomicProcessor, a “compact device for detecting and quantifying binding interactions in a label-free format utilizing surface plasmon resonance technology.”
The company also sells NanoCapture microarrays, which use “programmable hydrophobic and hydrophilic surface chemistries that result in minimal non-specific binding and high signal to noise ratios. They offer flexible surface chemistries for protein, nucleic acid, carbohydrate, and lipid immobilization in a flexible array density and flexible array spot size.”
Lumera board member Joseph Vallner, who was president and COO of Cell Genesys and CEO of the pharmaceutical company Capnia, will take the reins of the new division as chairman and CEO.
Tim Londergan, business director of Lumera’s Bioscience unit, has become president and COO of Plexera.
Lumera said it has hired investment bank Robert W. Baird & Co. to assist the company in evaluating partnering and financing alternatives over the coming months.