NEW YORK, March 19 - Wisconsin-based genomics company NimbleGen Systems on Tuesday said it has opened an office in Iceland that will manufacture custom DNA arrays and provide services for customers in North America and Europe.
"The new Iceland facility allows us to penetrate several key markets ... for the biopharmaceutical and academic research markets," Mike Treble, president and CEO of NimbleGen, said in a statement.
The facility, which will manufacturing but not R&D responsibilities, cost about $1 million and three months to complete, Treble told GenomeWeb during a pause in a business trip to the UK. It will eventually employ between 15 and 20 staff, all of whom will be Icelanders
Though a local manager will oversee the day-to-day operations of the new facility, David Cooper, chief medical officer and senior vice president of services at NimbleGen, will be responsible for the site and will visit it regularly.
Helping to create the Icelandic unit, called NimbleGen Systems of Iceland, or utibu a Islandi, was a collaboration inked early in the year with UVS, a subsidiary of Iceland Genomics. In this collaboration, UVS was given access to NimbleGen's microarray technology for its cancer research.