People in the News
Vijay Aggarwal has joined the board of directors of IBT Reference Laboratory, the international contract research and diagnostic testing lab said this week.
Aggarwal will provide IBT with strategic counsel in the areas of new business initiatives, operational protocol, and research and development. He currently serves as president and chief executive officer of Aureon Laboratories. Prior to joining Aureon, Aggarwal held positions at AAI Development Services, SmithKline Beecham Clinical Laboratories, and Quest Diagnostic Ventures.
He holds a PhD in pharmacology and toxicology from the Medical College of Virginia.
New Product Watch
Illumina last week launched two Infinium genotyping products for customers performing whole-genome and focused-content SNP genotyping.
The company said its HumanHap550+ BeadChip product allows customers to add up to 120,000 custom SNP markers to supplement the standard content provided on the firm's HumanHap550 BeadChip. In total, the two chips yield approximately 670,000 markers for association studies, Illumina said.
Illumina's iSelect Infinium product enables customers to create a custom array of up to 60,000 SNP markers per sample with 12 samples per chip, the company said. The custom genotyping technology is offered as a product or a service.
CombiMatrix last week introduced its QuadroCAS CustomArray Synthesizer. Co-developed with Japanese life sciences company Furuno Electric, CMBX said that the QuadroCAS system can fabricate up to four in situ arrays simultaneously in 24 hours or less.
The synthesizer also incorporates all reagents and hardware into a stand alone instrument, including Furuno's instrument control and signal processing electronics.
CombiMatrix will market and sell the product through its direct channels, distributor channels, and other partners and CMBX has global distribution rights for QuadroCAS, according to Mike Tognotti, CMBX's vice president of sales and marketing.
Tognotti told BioArray News this week that the QuadroCAS offers "smaller run batch sizes, low- to medium-density array formats, on-board reagents, and a smaller footprint" compared to the firm's CustomArray Synthesizer, which is "geared for customers needing higher production throughput, low, medium and high density array formats."