A Diagnostics & Imaging Week

Dade Behring (Deerfield, Illinois), which describes itself as the world's largest company solely dedicated to clinical diagnostics, and Diagnostics Products (DPC; Los Angeles), focused primarily on immunodiagnostic testing, reported that they have extended their co-marketing agreement.

The agreement provides Dade Behring's StreamLAB workcell customers the ability to extend their instrument's connectivity, and expand its capabilities, by integrating DPC's Immulite 2000 and Immulite 2500 systems within the StreamLAB workcell.

The original distribution alliance between Dade Behring and DPC began in 1999 and now will offer customers enhanced connectivity and an unparalleled automation suite through the seamless integration of both platforms.

"This valuable alliance has been an extremely important part of our strategy to offer our customers a broad range of automation options and individualized automation solutions reflecting their unique needs," said Jim Reid-Anderson, chairman, president and CEO of Dade Behring. "Together, DPC and Dade Behring provide powerful automation capabilities that are the best choice for many of our customers for whom automation is the right answer. Our shared goal is to ensure that we provide our customers, and the patients they serve, with product and services that meet their needs and improve the overall quality of healthcare."

Michael Ziering, chairman and CEO of Diagnostic Products, said, "Continuing a partnership with a company that is firmly established in the clinical chemistry market provides our customers what they are asking for access to one of the largest and most diversified combined menus of high-quality chemistry and immunoassay tests currently available."

Varian (Palo Alto, California) reported that it has signed an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) agreement with JEOL, a Japanese manufacturer of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectrometers and components. Under the agreement, JEOL will be purchasing at least $7.5 million of Varian's cryogenically cooled probes over the next five years.

Cryogenically cooled probes (-250 degrees C) are used for proteomics and pharmaceutical research and provide three to four times higher sensitivity than the equivalent room temperature probe, allowing scientists to achieve NMR results more than 10 times faster. The agreement with JEOL is primarily for cryogenically cooled probes with field strengths of 500 and 600 MHz.

"We are very pleased that JEOL has chosen Varian's cryogenically cooled probes to market and sell with their NMR systems," said Jan Tschida, vice president and general manager, magnetic resonance systems, at Varian.

"In order to stimulate the continuing growth of JEOL in this period of technological change, we decided that this agreement with Varian will be crucial for our NMR customers," said Y. Ishida, senior managing director of JEOL.

NMR is a non-destructive, information-rich analytical technique used in the fields of proteomics and genomics to identify the 3-D structure, function and dynamics of proteins, nucleic acids and other biological macromolecules. Such structural information is critical in proteomics/genomics and drug discovery applications where scientists desire a deeper understanding of the actual structure of target molecules and their spatial relationships with candidate pharmaceutical compounds.