Jan. 24 /PRNewswire/ -- Packard BioScience Company (Nasdaq: PBSC - news) today announced its intention to aggressively target the microarray industry in 2001. This will be the first full year of operations for the Company's recently created subsidiary, Packard BioChip Technologies LLC. At the recent JP Morgan H&Q Conference, Packard BioScience executives predicted greater than 30 percent annual growth for the suite of products offered by Packard BioChip Technologies LLC.
Packard BioChip consists of Packard's well-established biochip arraying, scanning instrumentation and broad intellectual property portfolio. The subsidiary is pursuing strategies for value added biochip production, both internally and with third parties. It also operates aggressive research programs in various areas of biochip technologies including advanced printing and scanning technologies, analysis software, and other aspects of biochip instrumentation.
Last year, Packard added three new U.S. patents(1) to its already extensive IP portfolio. The patents cover the Company's ink-jet aspirating and dispensing technology for microarray production. The technology is promoted through instrumentation sales as well as technology transfer and licensing agreements. To date, Packard has over 20 installations of its first generation BioChip Arrayer(TM) system. This research tool targets the assay development community, while the Company's second generation system is designed to provide larger volume production of biochips and microarrays in a format optimized for a manufacturing environment. The new system is expected to be commercially available mid year. In addition, the Company has successfully supplied its ink-jet technology to a number of collaborators, like Motorola Life Sciences, for producing both gene and protein chips.
Another technology that Packard is actively developing is its HydroGel(TM) substrate. The Company believes that this three dimensional substrate may have advantages over other available substrates for protein applications, and is currently investigating the product's potential with one of its collaborators, Oxford GlycoSciences plc. If trials support the Company's opinion, the collaboration may lead to the subsequent development and sale of protein chips.
``Our goal is to become a leading manufacturer of instrumentation and software that spans the microarray process, from production through analysis'' emphasized Emery G. Olcott, Chairman and CEO of Packard BioScience Company. ``In addition, we wish to be a major supplier of high quality biochips for drug discovery research involving the use of protein arrays. Our strategy is to use our own portfolio of technologies in conjunction with transfer and licensing agreements to exploit the vast market potential for biochips in functional genomics and proteomics. We believe we are well positioned to achieve this goal because we have a spectrum of printing technologies, a proprietary substrate on which to print, as well as scanning instrumentation and software. To broaden our portfolio, we are actively seeking partners who possess 'content' or assay reagents for protein chips. We believe that these partnerships will enable us to make biochips available to the market.'' |
