Pacesetter of Sylmar, Calif., has received US Patent No. 8,192,360, "Implantable body fluid analyzer."An implantable microarray device is described that includes an inlet for a body fluid; individual reaction cell arrays where each reaction cell array includes a series of reaction cells configured to receive the body fluid; a sensor array to sense a reaction result for an individual reaction cell array; and a positioning mechanism to position an individual reaction cell array with respect to the sensor array.
Nitto Denko of Osaka, Japan, has received US Patent No. 8,192,989, "Solid surface for biomolecule delivery and high-throughput assay." A method for introducing biomolecules into eukaryotic cells is provided. It includes coating a solid surface with a biomolecule delivery reagent; adding the biomolecules to be introduced into the eukaryotic cells onto the solid surface; and seeding cells on the solid surface at a sufficient density and under appropriate conditions for introduction of the biomolecules into the eukaryotic cells. According to the patent, the surface may be selected from a group consisting of flasks, dishes, multi-well plates, glass slides, and implanted devices. The biomolecule delivery reagent or transfection reagent may be selected from a group consisting of polymers, lipids, or lipid-polymers containing a cell-targeting or an intracellular targeting moiety and a membrane-destabilizing component and one or more delivery enhancers.
Toray Industries of Tokyo, and Kyoto University of Kyoto, Japan, have received US Patent No. 8,198,025, "Method for diagnosing esophageal cancer." The patent claims a chip-based method for detecting, identifying, or predicting the presence of esophageal cancer by determining in vitro an expression level of an esophageal cancer-associated target nucleic acid consisting of a specified sequence in a biological sample.
Illumina of San Diego has received US Patent No. 8,198,028, "Using populations of beads for the fabrication of arrays on surfaces." Methods for creating an array of features on a surface based on content transferred from beads to the surface. Nucleic acid content can be transferred using a method including the steps of providing a surface having one or more primer oligonucleotides attached to the surface; providing a pool of beads, where beads in the pool have templates attached; arraying the beads onto the surface by hybridizing the templates to the primer oligonucleotides; and extending the primers to produce copies of the templates attached to the surface.
Azbil of Tokyo has received US Patent No. 8,198,071, "Substrate for biochip, biochip, method for manufacturing substrate for biochip, and method for manufacturing biochip." The method includes preparing a base plate; forming a metallic membrane on the base plate; forming a crosslinkable polymer membrane on the metallic membrane; selectively removing portions of the polymer membrane; delineating wells reaching the base plate in the metallic membrane by using the polymer membrane as an etching mask; introducing hydroxyl groups on a surface of the base plate exposed from the wells; bonding probe biomolecules including protected amino groups to the hydroxyl groups; and soaking the base plate, the metallic membrane, and the polymer membrane in an alkaline solution to deprotect the amino groups included in the probe biomolecules and peel off the polymer membrane from the metallic membrane after the probe biomolecules are introduced on the base plate, where the crosslinkable polymer membrane protects the metallic membrane while the probe biomolecules are introduced on the plate exposed from the wells.
Royal Philips Electronics of Eindhoven, the Netherlands, has received US Patent No. 8,199,991, "Method to automatically decode microarray images."According to the patent, a multipass corner-finding algorithm is applied to the image. This consists of applying a Radon transform to an input microarray image to project the image into an angle and distance space where it is possible to find the orientation of the straight lines; applying a fast Fourier transform to the projected image to find its optimal tilting angle; determining the optimal first and last local maxima for the optimal tilting angle; back-projecting the determined maxima to the image space to find the first approximation of the first and last column lines of the image; rotating the image and repeating the steps to find the first approximation of the top and bottom row lines of the image.
Affymetrix of Santa Clara, Calif., has received US Patent No. 8,200,440, "System, method, and computer software product for genotype determination using probe array data." A method is described that includes receiving data files consisting of of intensity values associated with a probe on an array; normalizing the intensity values in each of the data files; determining an initial assignment for a number of genotypes using the intensity values from each file for each assignment; estimating a distribution of cluster centers using the initial assignments; combining the normalized intensity values with the cluster centers to determine a posterior estimate for each cluster center; and assigning genotype calls using a distance of the intensity values from the posterior estimate.