CHALFONT ST. GILES, U.K.—GE Healthcare announced it completed a licensing agreement with Applied Biosystems that grants the latter access to intellectual property involving biomagnetic nucleic acid isolation. The GE system is said to offer several advantages over conventional DNA and RNA isolation methods, such as filtration, including the elimination of clogging.

 

"This license recognizes the considerable value that our biomagnetic isolation technology brings to genomics researchers" said Eric Roman, GE's general manager of genomic sciences. "We are pleased to grant Applied Biosystems access to our patents in this area, which will allow them to use our proprietary magnetic separation protocols in conjunction with their MagMax range of products for nucleic acid isolation"

 

Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed. The move comes at a time when the nucleic acid isolation market is booming, according to a recent Frost & Sullivan report, which states that the market in 2005 surpassed $650 million in Europe alone and is project to almost reach $1.5 billion by 2012.