NEW YORK, Jan 5 - Packard BioScience has decided to terminate its collaboration with Aclara BioSciences in which it was to be the exclusive distributor of Aclara’s Arteas LabCards, a microfluidics array technology, the companies said Friday.
The companies said in a statement that the decision to end the collaboration, which began in February 2000, was made jointly.
Packard spokesman Mike Zebarth told GenomeWeb that Packard’s decision was based on the unexpected success of several products it introduced last year, namely its Fusion multimode plate-reader and AlphaScreen chemistry technology. “Those successes have presented us with a lot of new application development opportunities, and we have to prioritize where we’re going to put our resources,” he said.
“Every company makes decisions to put its resources where they’re going to make the most money, and clearly that’s on your own products as opposed to distributing other people’s products,” Zebarth said.
Aclara said the decision would benefit its own commercialization efforts as well. Packard’s decision to relinquish its exclusive rights to sell Arteas LabCards will give Aclara the opportunity to market the product to customers employing open architecture screening systems, the company said.
" We wanted to enhance our ability to serve this segment, and this change in our agreement with Packard provides that ability,” said Joseph Limber, president and CEO of Aclara.