Whole Genome microarray @ 99 USD

Ocimum Biosolutions is offering whole genome microarrays at 99 USD as part of its 6th year celebration, The limited period marketing offer is available for many cataloge whole genome microarrays at 99 USD.  irrespective of the number of microarrays ordered.

The company now offers one of the best cost effective microarray prices in the market

To get more information on microarray price please contact Ocimum Biosolutions web  http://www.ocimumbio.com/web/promo/array99.asp

 

 

Usage of Low-Density Oligonucleotide Microarrays for Prognosis Prediction of Colorectal Cancer Patients

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is one of the most common malignancies. Unfortunately a significant proportion of surgically cured patients in the early stage of the disease develop progression and die from the disease. DNA microarrays technology was used in more than sixty studies focused on colorectal cancer during last five years.

High-density DNA microarrays showed good analytical ability also in colorectal cancer prognosis. However, comparability and reproducibility of studies based on high-density DNA microarrays are notably affected by their technological diversity, and recent findings are not conclusive [4].

This study aimed to find individual up/down-regulated genes associated with progression and metastatic potential of colorectal cancers using low-density oligonucleotide microarrays spotted with genes known to be involved in process of metastasis development. We suppose that focusing on a particular biological pathway may be more useful than genome-wide screening for our purposes.

Molecular characterization of patients at high risk of cancer progression using this more economical and productive expression profiling method may improve our knowledge about cancer progression and dissemination and also assist to oncologists in treatment decision by selecting those patients who will need adjuvant chemotherapy.

Indian company gets 6.5 million USD IFC funding to promote contract research in bioinformatics and genetics industry

Hyderabad, November 15, 2006 – Ocimum Biosolutions today announced that International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector arm of the World Bank Group, will invest USD 6.5 million of equity, for a minority stake, and debt in the Company. Funds raised from this transaction will be used for financing both organic as well as inorganic growth of the Company.

Says Ms. Anuradha Acharya, Founder & CEO of Ocimum Biosolutions, “We are very happy to have IFC as our partner for growth. These are exciting times for Ocimum and to have IFC as an investor in the company brings a lot of confidence in our clients and partners.”

Iyad Malas, IFC’s Director for South Asia, said, “IFC’s support to Ocimum will provide the company its much needed growth capital to establish an internationally competitive contract research outsourcing company and promote the discovery of new drugs at lower costs. We will also help institute improved corporate governance standards.”

This is Ocimum’s first round of fund raising from private equity investors. The Company is contemplating another round of fund raising in the next 18-24 months.

Recently, Ocimum acquired a Europe based oligo manufacturer. The Company is also scouting for more targets in the European market.

Avendus Advisors was the sole financial advisor to Ocimum for the deal. Commenting on the transaction, Shiraz Bugwadia, A.V.P., Avendus Advisors “Ocimum is one of the few Indian players within the BioIT and micro arrays space to have scaled up successfully over the last couple of years. Ocimum has also been successful at using the inorganic route to scale rapidly by acquiring niche good quality companies in Europe such as MWG Biotech’s division and now a Netherlands based oligos manufacturer.”

About Ocimum Biosolutions:

Ocimum Biosolutions is a life sciences R&D enabling company with three main focus areas, BioIT, Microarrays and Contract research services. The US operations of the Company focuses on custom contract research services in the molecular biology area while the Indian operations provide BioIT services and leverage on India’s low cost advantage in IT space. The Company enjoys a strong brand image in the market and has worked with some of the best research organizations in the world like IIT Kharagpur, National Research Council of Canada, Agriculture and Agri Foods, NIH, Dow Agro Sciences, etc.

Ocimum has adopted an inorganic strategy to ramp up the business fast and has demonstrated its capability to execute this strategy in the past. As a part of its strategy, Ocimum acquired a division of MWG Biotech, Germany in 2005. The Company has received a host of awards and recognitions. The Company has recently received the IT Innovation award by NASSCOM, presented by H.E. the President of India. Also, Red Herring magazine picked Ocimum as one of the eight companies to watch in India and was a winner of Red Herring’s Asia 100. Deloitte ranked the Company as Fastest growing life sciences company in India.

For more information, please visit: www.ocimumbio.com.

About International Finance Corporation:

The International Finance Corporation, the private sector arm of the World Bank Group, is the largest multilateral provider of financing for private enterprise in developing countries. IFC finances private sector investments, mobilizes capital in international financial markets, facilitates trade, helps clients improve social and environmental sustainability, and provides technical assistance and advice to businesses and governments. From its founding in 1956 through FY06, IFC has committed more than $56 billion of its own funds for private sector investments in the developing world and mobilized an additional $25 billion in syndications for 3,531 companies in 140 developing countries. With the support of funding from donors, it has also provided more than $1 billion in technical assistance and advisory services.

For more information, please visit www.ifc.org.

standardization in microarray analysis software industry

scouting for the right software for the microarray analysis software , kept me thinkng why despite these software being used by scores or scientists no one has come forward to create what can be called as a standard for such software, the confusion rains in this field as one company’s software data do not work with another one and vice versa, For an industry like biology and drug discovery  that is trying to benefit from the knowledge of mathematics statitics and chemistry physics inability to port data across platform is a serious roadblock. there are standards such as MIAMe and MAGE but these are just data standards, not for softwares, I believe ther should be  something similar to ISO standards, SEI CMI etc.

majority of the newsgroup and forums are used by graduate and at times senor researchers to find out which is the best software to be used, I thought of starting a wiki page where researchers can post their comments and rate the products and compare the features against each other,

can open source ideals begin to give a real answer to biotech’s future

would it be possible to adopt the ideals of the open source in microarray development, there has been many research works that can be hailed as open source ideals in the biotechnology space, human genome project can be the perfect example, But apart from the few attempts by academia and non profits institutions there havnt been many attempts to look at this as a way forward, Microarray development can be termed as a lucrative field where such a coalition would accrue great benefits, By releasing the research works for others for free of cost it is possible to bring down the cost of microarray, there is no doubt that it would benefit the new research frontiers such as pharmacogenomics and toxicogenomics, by reducing the cost per array closer to any to other screening test currently adopted in hospitals or used by forensic labs. Microarray can also be used for reducing the costly PCR technique by closing in on a more focused number of genes to amplify from But it would mean that there has to be enough researchers out there who will be buying theses product in the first stage itself so as the company involved i such an audacious attempt would recover its cost and make profits to continue further work, thats a major hurdle to overcome, as custom microarray or at times even the existing one may not be useful to every researcher even if they are working on the same genome for example one person may be in toxicology research and the other in ecology or pure genetics even if they work on same genome the controls required and number of gene of interest would vary vastly across the spectrum, it may take a long time for the open source ideals to bear any fruit in this arena but that may be the way forward to bring meaningful results with less cost, till outsourcing can be a start for all things to come

 Abin paul Xavier

http://www.ocimumbio.com

benefit by outsourcing your custom array projects

new companies in India can do the otherwise costly custom microarray projects with much reduced price and as one of the most expensive part of the custom projects are the design of the custom oligo and its synthesis companies who can outsource these works to india;s postdocs and postgraduates in statics and informatic and biotech can save a lot these cost for the researchers, A new host of companies such as ocimum biosolutions  are doing just this. For example the Institute of Bioinformatics a non-profit organisation set up by the ‘The Genomics Research Trust’ in collaboration with the University of Hopkins at the International Tech Park, Whitefield, Bangalore. Other companies like Ocimum Biosolutions has worked with instituoins like NIH and CDC and has also proved itself by taking over companies like MWG biotech’s microarray division and Isogen life science for modified Oligo and now offers microarrays oligo and research services apart form LIMS