Baylor to Use Illumina's Infinium Products in Developmental-Diseases Studies
The Baylor College of Medicine's Medical Genetics Laboratories will use Illumina's Infinium high-density DNA-analysis products in genomic studies of developmental disorders.
The Houston-based lab said it intends to use the arrays to study genomic imprinting and its role in developmental diseases such as Prader-Willi syndrome, Angelman syndrome, and other disorders caused by uniparental disomy.
"Results from early tests show that we can quickly generate high-quality data using Illumina's SNP arrays, providing us with the information required to more rapidly and accurately identify causative aberrations in the genome," Arthur Beaudet, chair of the department of molecular and human genetics at Baylor College of Medicine, said in a statement.
BCM will use the SNP array in addition to a 105K oligo array that it developed with Agilent for use in chromosomal studies.
At the annual Clinical Genetics Meeting of the American College of Medical Genetics in Tampa, Fla., this week, Christine Eng, medical director of BCM's DNA Diagnostic Laboratory, said that the lab chose to add the Illumina SNP array to its offering in order to detect "copy-neutral events."
Aushon Raises $6.5M in New VC Financing Round
Aushon Biosystems has raised $6.5 million in private financing from North Bridge Venture Partners, the firm said this week.
Billerica, Mass.-based Aushon said that it used the capital in part to fund the purchase of Thermo Fisher Scientific's SearchLight Protein Array business. Aushon announced the acquisition earlier this month, though it has not disclosed the purchase price (see BAN 3/17/2009).
"This latest round of financing speaks directly to the strength of our company, and to a strategic vision that recognizes the tremendous impact that multiplexed assays and microarray technology can have in accelerating biomarker research,” Peter Honkanen, CEO of Aushon, said in a statement. "Our decision to acquire SearchLight is central to that vision."
SciGene Licenses Invitrogen Reagents
SciGene has licensed reagents from Life Technologies division Invitrogen for use in a new sample-prep system.
The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based firm said that it would incorporate reagents from Invitrogen's BioPrime Total Genomic Labeling System into a kit for use on SciGene's ArrayPrep Target Preparation System, a new instrument that it is developing to automatically label, purify, and load DNA samples onto microarrays for performing aCGH tests.
Terms of the license were not disclosed.