People in the News
Invitrogen said this week that it has formed a flow cytometry scientific advisory board to be chaired by Leonard Herzenberg. Invitrogen also said that Leonore Herzenberg, Leonard's wife, will join the board as a member.
The Herzenbergs are both professors at Stanford University, and run the shared flow cytometry facility there. Len Herzenberg invented the fluorescence-activated cell sorter, and along with Lee has developed several methods and instrumentation related to flow cytometry. Invitrogen said the advisory board will help guide the company's efforts in product development for immunology, flow cytometry, and cell biology.
GE Healthcare announced new positions for two officers this week: Jean-Michel Cossery and Michael Jones.
Chief marketing officer Jean-Michel Cossery is now also vice-president. The former executive vice-president of global marketing at Amersham Health since 2000, he joined GE Healthcare after GE acquired Amersham in 2004.
Cossery has five post graduate degrees, including an MBA from the Rotterdam School of Management. He received his PharmD in Pharmacology and PhD in nuclear chemistry and neurology from University of Paris in 1987 and 1986 respectively. He received his Masters' in organic chemistry in 1984 and in pharmacy in 1983, also from the University of Paris.
Jones is now vice-president, business development. He has been a general manager at GE since 1998. Prior to joining GE, Jones spent 10 years on Wall Street in a variety of M&A, private equity and investment banking roles.
SRI International this week said that Krishna Kodukula has joined its biosciences division as senior director of system biology. Kodukula will help establish new programs and expand business opportunities, working with SRI's Center of Excellence in Infectious Disease and Biodefense, and Center of Excellence in Computational Biology, SRI said.
Kodukula joins SRI from Sarnoff, an SRI subsidiary. Prior to his time at Sarnoff, Kodukula co-founded Small Molecule Therapeutics and Pyxis Technology Solutions. He has also been an investigator with Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceutical Research Institute and a fellow at the Roche Institute of Molecular Biology. He holds a PhD in biochemistry and botany from Utkal University in India.
ComScore Networks, a market research firm that specializes in Internet usage patterns, has appointed John Green as CFO. Green joins the firm from Invitrogen, where he served as the CFO and US services business leader for the company's BioReliance subsidiary. Green joined Invitrogen as the COO and CFO of InforMax after it was acquired by Invitrogen in 2002.
Briefs
Bruker, Protein Discovery to Co-Market Imaging Mass Spec Products
Bruker Daltonics and Protein Discovery will co-market MALDI molecular imaging mass spectrometry products for protein biomarker discovery, the companies said this week.
Protein Discovery holds a license from Vanderbilt University to provide imaging mass spectrometry services to customers in the research, pharmaceutical and diagnostics industries. Bruker, meantime, markets the MALDI Molecular Imager for this technique for research use only with Richard Caprioli at Vanderbilt.
Protein Discovery's imaging mass spectrometry service laboratory is currently outfitted with Bruker instrumentation.
MALDI molecular imaging mass spectrometry reads cell type-specific protein and peptide mass spectra directly from sliced tissues. The imaging resolution of the technique enables differential mass spectrometry analysis of adjacent tissue types within a single tissue slice, such as cancerous versus non-cancerous regions.
Qiagen, CytoPathfinder to Develop RNAi Screening Tools
Qiagen and CytoPathfinder said last week that they have formed a strategic collaboration to develop tools for high-throughput RNAi screening.
The arrangement would combine Qiagen's siRNA sets with CytoPathfinder's transfection microarray technology, which allows for siRNA screening on a microarray chip.
Additional terms of the deal were not disclosed.
GE Healthcare to Exclusively Distribute DiscoveRx Assays
GE Healthcare signed an exclusive distribution agreement with DiscoveRx for its HitHunter cAMP assays, GE Healthcare said last week.
Terms of the deal call for GE to exclusively distribute DiscoveRx's HitHunter cAMP Enzyme Fragment Complementation-based assays worldwide. The deal also expands GE's rights to distribute DiscoveRx's portfolio of kinase assays, with exclusive distribution in the Asia-Pacific region.
The cAMP assays are designed for high throughput, non-radioactive screening of compounds in drug discovery. The homogeneous cell-based assays are used to screen for G-protein coupled receptor activation in a microplate-based format.
Financial details were not disclosed.
Sequenom Issued Additional Nasdaq Delisting Warning
Sequenom said last week that it has received a letter from the Nasdaq exchange notifying the company that it is currently out of compliance with the stockholder equity listing requirement.
According to Sequenom, the letter indicates that the company's stockholders' equity of $8,329,000 as of March 31 is less than the $10,000,000 requirement.
Last month, Sequenom reported that it had failed to meet the Nasdaq's minimum closing bid price requirement, and that it had until June 15 to regain compliance before its shares would be delisted from the exchange.
Sequenom said that the stockholders' equity issue could serve as an additional basis for delisting.
Abbott Withdraws Opposition to Affy's European Patents
Abbott Laboratories earlier this month withdrew its opposition to Affymetrix patents in Europe, according to documents filed with the European Patent Office and obtained by BioCommerce Week sister publication GenomeWeb News.
The withdrawal comes one month after Affy licensed key array-related patents to Abbott. Affymetrix licensed a number of undisclosed patents to Abbott Molecular, a division of Abbott Laboratories, enabling Abbott to manufacture and sell comparative genomic hybridization microarrays, readers, and software for research and diagnostics.
According to EPO's online database, Abbott has withdrawn its opposition to two Affy patents: "Detection of nucleic acid sequences" (EP0834576) and "Identification of nucleic acids in samples" (EP0834575).
The EPO revoked the '576 patent in May 2005 after Applera, CombiMatrix, Abbott Laboratories, PamGene, and others successfully opposed it through the EPO's opposition division. Applera withdrew its opposition in February 2006 after obtaining a license to undisclosed Affy technology in December 2005.
Affy appealed the EPO's decision, but the remaining opponents continued their effort to oppose Affy's rights to enforce the '576 patent.
In a document filed on May 12 following Abbott's withdrawal, the EPO's appeals division stated that "the appeal proceedings will be continued between the remaining parties."
Fisher's Pierce Unit Becomes NIH's 'Preferred Vendor' for Protein Profiling
The US National Institutes of Health has chosen Fisher Biosciences' Pierce Biotechnology unit to be its 'preferred vendor' for conducting protein sample analysis, Fisher said this week.
The NIH will use Pierce's SearchLight multiplex-profiling technology to analyze secreted protein expression in samples submitted by the NIH, including the National Cancer Institute, the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, and other affiliated NIH organizations, according to Fisher.
SearchLight is a multiplex sandwich enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay in a 96-well plate-based array format. Fisher claims it can measure up to 12 secreted proteins simultaneously per well.
Financial details of the arrangement were not discussed.
MOgene Becomes First to Offer Sigma's GenomePlex Amplification Technology
Sigma-Aldrich said this week that MOgene has become the first array service provider to offer its GenomePlex Whole Genome Amplification technology.
Sigma said that the new service follows a licensing agreement it signed in February with Rubicon Genomics that allows Sigma to offer the kits to service providers.
MOgene, an Agilent-certified services provider, said it will integrate GenomePlex WGG into its setup. MOgene currently offers microarray-based gene expression and comparative genomic hybridization services on the Agilent platform.
Agilent to Market, Sell ExonHit SpliceArrays Worldwide
Agilent Technologies will market and sell ExonHit's line of splice variant arrays as commercial products worldwide, the companies said this week.
Agilent will now offer nine different ExonHit human and mouse SpliceArrays through its offices globally.
ExonHit's SpliceArray technology "also complements [Agilent's existing] portfolio of microarray-based research tools," Fran Dinuzzo, Agilent's vice president and general manager of integrated biology solutions, said in a statement.
Agilent originally agreed to distribute ExonHit's arrays last August. The arrays were initially offered only through a service when they were launched by ExonHit in February 2005.
Financial details of the new alliance were not discussed.