Research Areas

Computing specialist Nallatech recently announced a strategic collaborative agreement that will see the company work with California-based Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI) to develop high-performance computing (HPC) solutions for a variety of fields, including bioinformatics, medical imaging, and visualization systems. The new product and service offerings will combine SGI’s expertise in Reconfigurable Application-Specific Computing (RASC) and Nallatech’s field-programmable gate array (FPGA) technology.

Serologicals Corp. announced in mid-July implementation of a program for integrating operations of its two research products subsidiaries, Chemicon International and Upstate Group, LLC, into Serologicals. Serologicals acquired Chemicon in April 2003 and Upstate in October 2004, and plans to implement the changes in 2005.

Late last month Invitrogen added the latest feather to its proteomics cap with the acquisition of BioSource International for $130 million in cash. The deal augments Invitrogen’s fast-growing product lines in the areas of protein and primary antibodies which has been built through the recent acquisitions of Zymed Laboratories and Caltag Laboratories. With BioSource, Invitrogen gains important offerings in kinase and cytokine assay technologies and entry to important new markets such as immunology, oncology and neurodegenerative diseases.

Beckman’s acquisition of Coulter Corporation in October 1997 created the company as it is today, one of the largest providers of diagnostics and life science research products in the industry. Scott Garrett was named CEO of the company in February and recently took time for an exclusive interview with DDN Chief Editor Chris Anderson to share his vision of the industry and Beckman Coulter’s path for the future.

Pfizer Inc. in mid-June announced its $1.9 billion acquisition of Vicuron Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company focused on developing anti-infectives. Vicuron’s pipeline includes two drugs — anidulafungin, for fungal infections, and dalbavancin, for Gram-positive infections — that Vicuron expects will reach markets in early 2006.

In a move that is expected to boost both its GeneChip technology and the assays available for its chips, Affymetrix recently acquired ParAllele BioScience, a privately held, South San Francisco-based company that provides assay technology for comprehensive genetic studies. Initially applied to genotyping, these highly flexible assays have the potential to be used in a broad variety of microarray applications.

Just five years after it began a project to develop the next generation of supercomputers, IBM announced in early June a joint research effort with Switzerland’s The Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), to begin building a detailed model of the largest and most complex part of the human brain, the neocortex. The project, dubbed “Blue Brain”, will employ the staggering computing capacity of IBM’s eServer Blue Gene supercomputer.

A special meeting of Argonaut shareholders in early June formally approved the sale of the company’s assets and consumables and process instrument business to Biotage, a move that strengthens the company’s offerings in medicinal chemistry, thermal synthesis, cleanup and purification systems. Total purchase price amounted to 145 million Swedish krona or about $21.2 million. In all, sales from Argonaut products are expected to add over $18 million in annual sales to Biotage’s bottom line, an increase of roughly 25 percent.

RNA isolation/purification is a vital step in a number of downstream applications including real-time quantitative PCR, reverse transcription PCR, microarrays, Northern blot analysis, nuclease protection assays, RNA mapping, in vitro translation and cDNA library construction.