Affymetrix will sell Almac Diagnostics' Xcel array for biomarker discovery and development to its clients worldwide, the firms said last week.
Craigavon, UK-based Almac launched the Xcel array via a service in 2010 (BAN 6/8/2010). Affy manufactures the chip, which is optimized for use with formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded tissue samples. The array contains 97,000 transcripts and was designed for use in studies where cross-disease compatibility is important. Almac also offers a menu of disease-specific arrays for profiling expression in specific cancers, including colorectal, lung, ovarian, and prostate cancers.
Austin Tanney, Almac's scientific liaison officer, told BioArray News that Almac has seen "significant demand and interest" in the array since it was launched, and that the firm has supported that demand via a service model, but that it was time to make the chip available in a kit format.
"With the increasing demand and interest in Xcel for a diverse range of applications it has become apparent that there is a real opportunity to open up access to the platform to wider distribution and Affymetrix [was] the best partner to do this with," Tanney said.
Kevin Cannon, expression business lead at Affy, said in a statement that the Xcel array is "ideal" for gene-expression profiling from FFPE tissues, and a "significant technology advancement."
Further details of the agreement were not disclosed.
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