Barloworld Scientific has agreed to sell off the remainder of its Scientific Laboratory Group of businesses to Nova Capital Management for £75m (€ 107.3m), with completion expected by the end of November 2007.
"The sale of the Laboratory business is the final step in the disposal of the Barloworld Scientific division and follows the disposal of Melles Griot in July 2007," said Clive Thomson, CEO of Barloworld.
"This is another important milestone in executing the strategic actions announced earlier this year to reposition Barloworld as a focused distribution company and to unlock shareholder value,"
Beckman Coulter has extended its ten year agreement with US healthcare purchasing group Amerinet to provide core laboratory systems and supplies for another three years.
The deal, worth around $75m per year will see Amerinet memebers continue to purchase automation, general chemistry, immunoassay, integrated workcells, haematology, flow cytometry and coagulation products from Beckman Coulter.
"These agreements are a great opportunity to continue to demonstrate our commitment to improving patient health and reducing the cost of care," said Leland Mc Arthy, corporate vice president of North American Commercial Operations at Beckman Coulter.
"Our systems simplify and automate laboratory processes, helping to improve the efficiency of Amerinet members."
Harvard Bioscience has acquired life science tools manufacturer and distributor Panlab s.l. of Barcelona, Spain in a deal worth approximately $5m (€3.5m).
The company is expecting that the acquisition will add between $8m and $10m a year to its earnings and be accretive to non-GAAP earnings per share during the fourth quarter of 2007.
"With the acquisition of Panlab, we are able to expand our distribution channels by establishing a subsidiary in Spain. In addition, the acquisition provides us access into a segment of the neuroscience research market which we estimate to be between $35 million and $70 million," said Chane Graziano CEO of Harvard Bioscience.
Inverness Medical Innovations is to release 49 workers and incur costs of $7.2m as part of its restructuring programme after its series of acquisitions this year - the most significant being its acquisition of Biosite for over $1.6bn.
In addition, Inverness has agreed to acquire health and care management services company Alere Medical for $302m in a bid to enter into the disease management industry.
"Alere's expertise in patient monitoring and particularly in home chronic heart failure management complements our cardiac diagnostic technologies being developed at Biosite in San Diego and at Stirling Medical in Scotland," said Ron Zwanziger, CEO of Inverness.
This acquisition follows its $326m purchase of healthcare diagnostic tools provider Cholestech Corporation.
Nonlinear Dynamics has expanded its distribution operations in the Asia Pacific region with the appointment of a new distributor manager, and expanding its distributor network with an agreement with SCRUM Inc. who specialise in the sales and marketing of scientific products in the Japanese market.
Dr Paul Goulding has been appointed as the distributor manger and will be looking to expand the company's distributor channels for its SameSpots and Progenesis Stats software for 2D and DiGE (difference gel electrophoresis) image analysis.
"Scientists are now realising that if protocols are adhered to, 2D is far more reproducible than first thought and may be the only platform currently capable of supporting cross lab reproducibility," said Will Dracup, CEO of nonlinear dynamics.
"With the addition of Paul and SCRUM Inc to the team, we can now really push the SameSpots technology in Asia and build on the momentum that HUPO has generated."
Oxford Biomedica and Sigma-Aldrich have won the first round in their patent infringement dispute with Open Biosystems over the use of modified lentiviruses as vectors to deliver genetic materials such as shRNAs (short hairpin RNAs) that can knockdown genes in hard-to-transfect cells to enable RNAi (RNA interference) experiments.
Sigma-Aldrich has exclusively licensed the technology described in US Patent No.s 6,924,123 and 7,056,699 entitled 'Lentiviral LTR Deleted Vector' for Life Science use in its Mission LentiExpress shRNA system.
"I am delighted with this Order, which validates Oxford BioMedica's patents and strengthens our position in this field," said Peter Nolan, senior vice president for commercial development at Oxford Biomedica.
ThalesNano is collaborating with the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich) to develop new applications for flow chemistry techniques that will solve difficult chemistry applications.
"This collaboration will enable us to utilize our technology and to jointly develop novel applications that will serve the entire scientific community," said Dr Laszlo Urge, CEO of ThalesNano.
"Our products are in use at all major pharmaceutical, agrochemical and chemistry companies and also support in-house scientists in developing their own novel applications. The technology developed as part of this collaboration may result in spin-off opportunities in future."
