Microfluidics firm Dolomite said this week that it has licensed microdroplet generation technology from the Japan Science and Technology Agency.
Under the agreement, Royston, UK-based Dolomite has a license to JST's microdroplet generation patent families including WO 2002/068104, entitled "Process for producing emulsion and microcapsules and apparatus therefor;" and WO 2005/089921, "Method and device for producing micro-droplets."
Dolomite said that the license authorizes it to grant sub-licenses to the technology, and that its customers may now purchase and freely use Dolomite droplet chips for R&D purposes.
The company offers a wide range of droplet-forming devices featuring different junction geometries, channel sizes, and surface properties for use in applications such as compartmentalized chemistry, single-cell analysis, high-throughput screening, droplet PCR, and emulsion studies.
Earlier this year, Dolomite announced a collaboration with San Francisco-based startup GigaGen to develop droplet merger chips for GigaGen's Cell-Seq platform for massively parallel single-cell genetic analyses using highly multiplexed PCR and next-generation sequencing (PCR Insider, 2/23/2012).