Thanks, Tuck!
Sorry, I don't have Lehman stuff either.
Interesting factoid.... my lab bought the very first robot for 96 well plates.
Few know the history of Chiron, but it's really fun to study. Chiron started out at about the same time as Zymogenetics, and they were almost twins. Both began life as focal points for yeast genetics.
OK... back on-topic. Chiron bought Cetus, one of biotech's initial big three, with Genentech and Amgen. Cetus was known for weak mid-level managers, and they didn't make it over a slump caused by the selection of very lame projects.
But, early in development, Cetus had a small, GREAT robotics group. They produced an instrument, tiny little footprint, that put stuff into 96 well plates with minimal well-to-well contamination. I think that it was called the ProPette?? My lab at Bayer (thanks to the effort of a guy named Richard Rutherford) worked out a software package with Cetus in beta testing. When the instrument was available for sale, we just kept the version that we had during beta. It ran and ran and ran and ran, never a glitch. It allowed the lab to increase ELISA capacity about 4X.
Shortly thereafter, Beckman built their first robot. They made it about two inches too large to fit into any of the class II biohazard cabinets that were available at the time, rendering it useless for anyone who was interested in harvesting supernatants from plates that were used for cell fusions ("hybridomas").
Cetus kept the group for some time, but it failed to thrive along with the company. It would be fun to google the subject and try to figure out where everyone went. |
