AFFX now in the teens. I have written that though AFFX is expensive, it is worth it because its competitors have made little headway. Time for an update? It will be interesting to see how Agilent does. They are on the market now, though their life sciences segment didn't do well last quarter. Comarketing agreement with Qiagen should help against AFFX, we'll see. But that was just signed, I don't know when everybody will be trained and selling, but probably no impact for another quarter or two.
agilent.com
Meanwhile, privately held NimbleGen is on the market with custom arrays apparently produced with a pretty quick and cheap method. The abstract below is from the 11/02 issue of Genome Research:
>>Gene Expression Analysis Using Oligonucleotide Arrays Produced by Maskless Photolithography
Emile F. Nuwaysir,1 Wei Huang,2 Thomas J. Albert,1 Jaz Singh,1 Kate Nuwaysir,1 Alan Pitas,1 Todd Richmond,1 Tom Gorski,1 James P. Berg,1 Jeff Ballin,2 Mark McCormick,1 Jason Norton,1 Tim Pollock,1 Terry Sumwalt,1 Lawrence Butcher,1 DeAnn Porter,1 Michael Molla,3 Christine Hall,4 Fred Blattner,5 Michael R. Sussman,6 Rodney L. Wallace,1 Franco Cerrina,1,2 and Roland D. Green1,7
1 NimbleGen Systems, Inc., Madison, Wisconsin 53711, USA; 2 Center for NanoTechnology, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering, 3 Computer Sciences Department, 4 Department of Bacteriology, 5 Department of Genetics, and 6 Biotechnology Center, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA
Microarrays containing 195,000 in situ synthesized oligonucleotide features have been created using a benchtop, maskless photolithographic instrument. This instrument, the Maskless Array Synthesizer (MAS), uses a digital light processor (DLP) developed by Texas Instruments. The DLP creates the patterns of UV light used in the light-directed synthesis of oligonucleotides. This digital mask eliminates the need for expensive and time-consuming chromium masks. In this report, we describe experiments in which we tested this maskless technology for DNA synthesis on glass surfaces. Parameters examined included deprotection rates, repetitive yields, and oligonucleotide length. Custom gene expression arrays were manufactured and hybridized to Drosophila melanogaster and mouse samples. Quantitative PCR was used to validate the gene expression data from the mouse arrays.
[The sequence data from this study have been submitted to GEO under accession nos. GPL208, GSM2409, GSM2410, GSM2411, GSM2412, GSM2413, GSM2414, GSE81, GSE82.] <<
nimblegen.com
I believe they started selling in 2H02.
And then there's publicly traded CMBX. But it doesn't look as though they've launched yet.
combimatrix.com
It will be interesting to listen to CCs and see if anyone talks about gaining or losing share, versus bad business conditions.
Cheers, Tuck |
