Initially the cooperation will be focused on research and development of micro- and nanodispensing systems and its automation for life sciences
During the opening ceremony of the Center for Life Science Automation (Celisca) in the technology park of Warnemunde on 20 June 2005, Scienion and Celisca signed a cooperation agreement.
The aim of the agreement is to combine the expertise of both partners, particularly in the field of liquid handling and automation for new applications in life sciences.
For a first period of one year the cooperation will be focused on research and development of micro- and nanodispensing systems and its automation for life sciences.
"The need for automation in various applications of life sciences is a crucial issue, especially in industrial R and D laboratories with high throughput.
"By combining the different know-how of Celisca and Scienion we expect distinct synergies in the development of new innovative products" said Holger Eickhoff, CEO of Scienion.
Kerstin Thurow, president of Celisca, explains: "In Scienion we have found another strategically important partner.
"The planned cooperation in the area of nanodispensing for automated screening systems will extend our product and service portfolio and opens up new fields of application and technology".
Celisca says it offers the ideal forum for effective interdisciplinary research and development in the area of life science automation.
Celisca is one of six centres for innovation competence funded by the BMBF, the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research.
This funding promotes the development of internationally competitive high level research in eastern Germany.
The core competences of Celisca include automation and engineering, chemistry and biotechnology, screening and analysis, information processing technologies and Lims as well as automation assessment.
Scienion is a Berlin-based life science company offering complete solutions in the field of parallel bioanalytics.
Customers include pharma and biotech companies as well as academic research institutions.
Scienion's technologies were twice awarded with the Innovationspreis Berlin-Brandenburg.
In 2000, Scienion received the prize for its innovative chip technology which relies on a novel surface coating creating virtually wall-less reaction vessels.
In 2004, scienion won the prize for its Sciflexarrayer, a piezoelectric dispensing system.
The Sciflexarrayer allows the aspiration of ultra low level liquid volumes from different reservoirs and contact-free micro drop delivery in the picolitre range onto a variety of carriers.
Founded in December 2000 as a spin-off of the Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetics, the company was originally focused on biochip platform technologies.
With the successful launch of the Sciflexarrayer dispensing system in 2003, the company's focus has been switched to hardware.
Today, Scienion is a rapidly growing company in the field of ultra low level liquid handling systems including applications in genomics, proteomics and high throughput.
Scienion has currently 26 employees.
