It's a NanoDrop for Thermo Fisher Scientific
violet visible) instrument manufacturer NanoDrop Technologies for
an undisclosed amount.
The acquisition of NanoDrop, which has annual revenues of $35m (€24.6m), will strengthen Thermo Fisher Scientific's UV-Vis spectrophotometry instrument portfolio and enable the company to provide its customers with instruments that can analyse samples as small as 1ul. The instruments have been very successful amongst researchers analysing valuable biological samples during proteomic, genomic and drug discovery experiments because of the minute amounts of sample required. The product line will be integrated into Thermo Fisher Scientific's ever-expanding instruments business as part of the Analytical Technologies segment and will be marketed under the Thermo Scientific technology brand name. "The NanoDrop group has been very successful and we are planning to bring them in and pour more investment into them to further that success" said Dr Mike Jost, vice president and general manager for molecular spectroscopy, microanalysis and surface analysis group at Thermo Fisher Scientific. "This is a bolt-on, feed it and let it grow acquisition, so customers shouldn't see a change in the company apart from more investment and support of the group under the wings of Thermo Fisher Scientific." One of the major reasons for the company's previous success has been its patented sampling system that uses surface tension to hold a tiny drop of a sample solution in place, dramatically reducing the amount of sample needed for analysis. This approach has been particularly successful with the bioresearch communities that work with small amounts of very expensive samples. "The microvolume capability of the sampling technique with its speed, simplicity and reliability of measurement make this a very attractive technology," said Dr Jost. In addition, the system removes the need for consumables such as cuvettes or capillaries. "Most traditional spectrophotometry techniques have relied on some form of cuvette or capillary, but in this case the sample is simply pipetted directly onto an optical measurement surface, the upper surface is lowered and engages the droplet to form a liquid column before the measurement is taken," said Dr Jost. This reduces variation between measurements caused by changing cuvettes or capillaries as the sample directly wets the system optics. While some may be concerned about contamination occurring between consecutive measurements, the company has shown that simply wiping the optics clean between measurements is enough to ensure that no carryover is observed - even when sample concentration varies by more than 1000 fold. NanoDrop currently has two UV-Vis spectrophotometers on the market, the single sample ND-1000 and the higher-throughput ND-8000 that can analyse up to eight samples at once. These instruments can quickly measure the absorbance of DNA, RNA, dyes proteins and microbial cell cultures across a wide dynamice range - from 2 to 3700ng of dsDNA (double stranded DNA) per ul. In addition, the multi-source ND-3300 fluorospectrometer can measure the fluorescence emission of various fluorophores commonly used in nucleic acid and protein labeling analysis. "These products have been extremely successful and the growth of NanoDrop has been quite phenomenal with the company primarily focused on molecular biology applications," said Dr Jost. "While there is still a lot of leg room for the company to grow in that area, we also believe that the surface tension-based sampling technology could be applied to many other areas and workflows."
