This story was originally posted on Nov. 4.
Innopsys, a Carbonne, France-based optics company that makes and sells high-resolution microarray scanners, recently established a US presence. The move comes as the firm prepares to launch a high-resolution scanner next year.
The new office, based in Chicago, will mainly serve as a sales and marketing hub as Innopsys looks to grow its US customer base. The company to date has relied on a distributor, Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Arrayit, to cover the US.
According to CEO Stéphane Le Brun, Innopsys has "been doing well in Europe and Asia, but would like to increase sales" in the US. "The idea is to offer direct support to US users," he said. "We also want to have feedback from the US market for product development purposes." He added that Innopsys will continue to work with Arrayit in the US market.
Le Brun spoke with BioArray News during the American Society of Human Genetics annual meeting, held in Washington, DC, last week.
Founded in 1999, Innopsys entered the biotechnology market in 2006 with its InnoScan 710, a 3-micron resolution system. In 2008, it launched its InnoScan 900, a 1-micron resolution system (BAN 6/3/2008). The firm also sells an autoloader and Mapix software for use with its scanners.
The need for higher-resolution scanners has been driven by the availability of the higher-density microarrays sold by firms like Agilent Technologies and Roche NimbleGen. Rivals in the scanner market, such as Tecan and Molecular Devices, have also upgraded their systems in recent years (BAN 5/13/2008).
According to Le Brun, the company is now planning an even higher resolution scanner, one capable of 0.25 micron level resolution. This new system should be available by the end of 2011, Le Brun said. Given its high-resolution capabilities, Le Brun said the new platform will be "geared more toward imaging tissue arrays" than the current generation of high-density chips sold on the market.
Have topics you'd like to see covered in BioArray News? Contact the editor at jpetrone [at] genomeweb [dot] com