Waters celebrates 25 years in India
17 July 2012 | News
Waters India, a fully owned subsidiary of Waters Corporation in the USA, is celebrating its silver jubilee anniversary of its successful operations in India. Driven by a long-term commitment to the region, Waters had the vision 25 years ago to invest in India as the first analytical science company to incorporate in the country by creating a joint venture with local partners in 1988.
“What attracted us 25 years ago to India is the same thing that motivates us today; we continue to welcome the opportunity to work with and contribute to one of the most exciting economies in world,� said Mr Art Caputo, president of the Waters Division.
Understanding scientific challenges through cooperation, Waters' strategy is to invest in local service and support, and to focus on partnerships tailored to meet the needs of India's leading organizations. Waters consistently invests in Waters India to create the best infrastructure including world-class application and demonstration laboratories. Waters India is currently expanding its headquarter facility in Bangalore.
Throughout the country, Waters partners with pharmaceutical companies, contract research organizations and government agencies with the goal of expanding research capabilities, increasing laboratory efficiency, and navigating complex regulatory compliance requirements worldwide. Examples of recent partnerships include Dr. Reddy's Laboratories, Lambda Therapeutic Research, the Marine and Agricultural Product Export Development Agency and the India Environmental Protection Agency.
Waters is marking the 25th anniversary of the start of business operations in India, with the initiation of online ordering through a new order center. Waters is introducing several new features designed to facilitate ordering and lower transaction costs by including the posting of real-time product availability, local currency pricing, available discounts, order tracking, and special offers.
Automated 3D cell culture solutions
Reinnervate and Tecan Trading, have signed a co-marketing agreement to develop a range of automated solutions for 3D cell culture, based on the Freedom EVO liquid handling workstations and Reinnervate's Alvetex Scaffold 3D cell culturing technology.Alvetex products are based on a highly porous, polystyrene scaffold structure with a uniform and well-defined architecture that provides an excellent environment for cells to acquire and maintain their natural 3D shape and organization during incubation. The Alvetex Scaffold technology therefore gives more biologically relevant data by overcoming the limitations of traditional monolayer cultures. In combination with the flexibility and reliability of the Freedom EVO platform, it will provide powerful solutions for automated growth and maintenance of 3D cell cultures.
Agilent expands HaloPlex target enrichment
Agilent Technologies expanded the HaloPlex target enrichment system, which will now be available on Ion Torrent's Personal Genome Machine, a benchtop sequencing solution.The HaloPlex system features a unique paired-end design, which positions reads at both target ends using a single-end sequencing run. By taking advantage of the extra coverage that the paired-end design provides, researchers will be able to save sequencing costs and time.
HaloPlex continues to break barriers common to other target enrichment technologies and can now enable larger capture sizes during desktop sequencing – up to 5Mb or approximately 2,000 genes on a MiSeq personal sequencer. HaloPlex offers greater efficiency and improved performance, and it allows researchers to process up to 250,000 amplicons in the same tube.
The HaloPlex system's fast-scaling target enrichment technology demonstrates Agilent's ongoing commitment to enabling a better research workflow regardless of the sequencer platform being used.
HaloPlex is a flexible and customizable product that enables users to create designs in less than 10 minutes to enrich thousands of genomic targets, using the no-charge Web Design Wizard. Agilent acquired Halo Genomics of Uppsala, Sweden, and the HaloPlex platform in December, 2011. HaloPlex technology complements the existing Agilent SureSelect target-enrichment system.
