New Products
Agilent launched this week its 6000 Series of mass spectrometers. The series includes five mass specs: the company's first ever Q-TOF, called the 6510 Q-TOF; the company's first ever triple quadrupole, called the 6410 Triple Quadrupole LC/MS; an updated ion trap, called the 6300 Series Ion Trap LC/MS; an updated TOF, called the 6210 TOF LC/MS; and an updated single quad, called the 1200 Series Single Quad LC/MS. For more details, see story.
Qiagen introduced this week new MALDI chips. According to the company, hydrophobic surfaces on the new Mass Spec Focus Chips enable large sample volumes to be loaded, concentrated, and processed in situ, while minimizing sample loss and maximizing signals. The new Mass Spec Turbo Chips contain up to 1,600 pre-spotted matrix spots. For phosphorylation mapping, the Mass Spec Focus IMAC Chips offer on-chip purification and concentration of phosphopeptides. The Mass Spec Focus Desalting Chips provide on-chip cleanup and concentration of peptide samples.
Reactome 16 is available at http://www.reactome.org. The release includes the annotation of host-pathogen pathways in the form of Influenza A infections, as well as new modules on the human electron transport chain and its integration with mitochondrial ATP synthesis and thermogenesis, the Drosophila melanogaster signaling pathway mediated by insulin-like proteins, and a "substantially revised" module covering the G2/M transition of the human mitotic cell cycle. Reactome now includes 1,451 curated human reactions and 1,179 annotated human proteins.
Movers & Shakers
PerkinElmer this week appointed Robert Friel as president of the Life and Analytical Sciences division. He succeeds Peter Coggins, who will retire in February, but will continue to support the company as a senior advisor and consultant through mid-2007.
According to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing by PerkinElmer this week, Friel also will continue to serve as vice chairman of the firm and as a member of its board of directors. As a result of his promotion, Friel's annual base salary will be increased to $550,000, effective Feb. 1.
Prior to his appointment, Friel served as executive vice president and chief financial officer of PerkinElmer. Prior to joining PerkinElmer, Friel held several senior management positions at AlliedSignal, now Honeywell International. Friel also serves on the boards of Millennium Pharmaceuticals and Fairchild Semiconductor.
The promotion was announced one week after the firm said it had hired former investment analyst Aaron Geist as vice president of business development.
Trevor Hawkins stepped down this week as president and CEO of MDS to take a position in Europe with Phillips, MDS said this week.
Hawkins has also resigned from the board of Tm Bioscience, said Tm in a statement released today.
Genologics Life Sciences Software announced this week the appointment of Don Listwin to the company's board of directors.
Listwin spent a decade as executive vice president at Cisco Systems before leaving the company in 2000. More recently, Listwin served as the former president and CEO of Openwave Systems, a software and services provider for the communications industry. In 2004, Listwin founded the Canary Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to the detection of early cancer. He was inspired by personal experience with family members fighting cancer.