BIOKE and Fluidigm Announce Exclusive Distribution Agreement

Fluidigm Corporation and BIOKE have announced an agreement in which BIOKE is appointed as exclusive distributor for the BioMark™ System for real-time PCR and genotyping in the Benelux.

The Fluidigm says that the BioMark system provides orders-of-magnitude increase in throughput compared to conventional RT-PCR and genotyping platforms, at a fraction of the labor and running cost. This breakthrough is possible because the BioMark system reads dynamic arrays – nanofluidic chips that contain preprogrammed fluidic networks that automatically combine sets of samples with sets of PCR assays.

BioMark dynamic arrays can provide a high-throughput and means to validate gene- or SNP-based biomarkers by PCR. An array generates 2,304 PCR assays, yet it requires only 96 pipetting steps (input of 48 off-the-shelf primer-probe sets and 48 samples), or 1/40 the pipetting steps required by 384-well systems.