LifeScan, Abbott makes offer to diabetic patients

LifeScan (Milpitas, California) said that it will provide a OneTouch Brand Blood Glucose Monitor and a starter supply of test strips free of charge to any diabetes patient that monitors their blood glucose with a BD Logic Monitor and BD Test Strips from BD (Franklin Lakes, New Jersey).

BD has reported that it will exit the blood glucose monitoring market. The company will discontinue distribution of BD Logic Monitors immediately and, at the end of 2007, will stop distributing BD Test Strips.

LifeScan is a Johnson & Johnson (New Brunswick, New Jersey) company and a maker of blood glucose monitoring products.

Abbott (Alameda, California) also said it will provide a free Abbott blood glucose meter and a starter supply of strips to all blood glucose monitoring patients using BD Logic meters and test strips.

"Abbott made this decision after Becton, Dickinson's announcement that it intends to exit the blood glucose monitoring market by the end of 2007," the company said.

Abbott said its FreeStyle line of blood glucose meters "are most similar" to BD Logic in that both blood glucose monitoring systems require a very small blood sample size, just 0.3 microliters, and offer fast test times.

Millipore opens new R&D Center

Millipore (Billerica, Massachusetts), a provider of products and services intended to improve productivity in the laboratory and biopharmaceutical manufacturing, has opened a new $50 million R&D center in Bedford, Massachusetts. Millipore said that the center will enable it "to leverage cutting-edge technologies," positioning it to meet "the growing demands of the global biopharmaceutical market and the life sciences industry."

The 110,000-square-foot building, designed by ARC/Architectural Resources (Cambridge, Massachusetts), contains 47,000 square feet of lab space and consolidates multiple functions, fostering, Millipore said, a collaborative approach for up to 500 professionals who will work there. Martin Madaus, CEO and chairman of Millipore, said that the center "[enables] us to attract the best scientific talent and bring together multiple research disciplines to develop integrated solutions.