The two companies have pooled their technical experience to develop a complete kit-based solution for superior oligonucleotide micorarrays
Two of the leading manufacturers of microarray products, Operon Biotechnologies and Schott Nexterion, have signed a co-marketing agreement.
Operon, a supplier of synthetic DNA, offers array ready oligo sets containing 70mer oligonucleotides for expression analysis.
Schott Nexterion develops and markets a wide range of coated and uncoated glass slides for DNA and protein microarraying.
The partnership is designed to greatly enhance the performance potential of oligonucleotide based microarrays.
"We intend to address the growing need for improved sensitivity, reproducibility and data quality.
"The opening of the world's most advanced slide production plant in Jena on 1 October 2004 contributes to this goal and shows our strong commitment to the technology.
"Scientists from both companies have combined their expertise in defining an optimised technological solution that moves microarrays to the next level", said Lutz Wehmeier, Schott Nexterion's general manager.
Ron Opstelten, Operon's VP general manager in Europe, added that "Operon is very excited about the cooperation with Schott Nexterion.
"Operon's experience and knowledge in synthesis and design of long oligomers for DNA arrays combined with Schott Nexterion's long experience in the development of surface chemistries and glass slides will provide our customers with an unsurpassed resource for products and knowledge.
"We strongly believe that our cooperation will make our customers even more successful in their DNA array experiments".
The partnership combines certain specific international sales and marketing activities of the companies.
The two companies have pooled their technical experience to develop a complete kit-based solution for superior oligonucleotide micorarrays.
The joint product offering comprises oligonucleotide sets, optimised microarray slides and reagents.
The coated slides included in the kits are an active chemistry type, said to offer significant advantages over conventional slides.
These benefits include higher signal-to-background ratios and lower non-specific binding.
The individual kit components cover the entire microarray process chain.
Therefore the new partnership between the two companies represents an important milestone towards microarray standardisation and data reproducibility, they say.
The new kits will be offered in two parts, allowing scientists to purchase the optimised oligo sets and the slides/reagents separately.
Flexibility for the user is further enhanced with kit modules offered in a variety of pack sizes.
