A new view for Bruker

BILLERICA, Mass.—In an effort to add to its broad range ofpreclinical imaging systems, Bruker Corp. in mid-September entered into anagreement to acquire the preclinical in-vivo imaging equipment product portfolio and related assets of theMolecular Imaging business of Rochester, N.Y.-based Carestream Health.

Financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed, but thecompanies noted in the announcement about the deal that as part of thetransaction, the majority of Carestream employees involved in the preclinical in-vivo imaging business will be offered the chance to joinBruker.

Carestream will retain the remaining assets of its MolecularImaging business, including its life-science X-ray film product lines and itsGel Logic and Image Station in-vitroimaging equipment product portfolio. Carestream will continue operating itslife-science X-ray film business, and will continue to support its in-vitro product customers with service and parts. Newproduction of its Gel Logic and Image Station in-vitro products will be discontinued.

"In my division of Bruker, we deal with magnetic resonanceimaging, and in the MRI field these days, there is a lot of preclinical MRI onmice and rats, for example, for disease modeling, drug discovery and the like,"says Dr. Werner Maas, president of Bruker BioSpin Corp. "So we have these high-endpreclinical imaging machines that are mostly sold to academia and pharma forresearch purposes, but we also wanted to bring down the MRI line to thebiologist level and other smaller-scale applications."

One step toward that goal, he says, was the creation of theIcon compact desktop MRI scanner for small rodents like rats and mice that wasintended to, as Bruker describes, bring "MRI within everyone's reach" bycombining an innovative cryogen-free, permanent magnet design from AspectImaging and AVANCE III spectrometer technology with the ParaVision MRIsoftware.

"We then had a means of addressing the larger biology marketand later, in April, we had the opportunity to acquire a company called SkyScanand offer micro-CT (X-ray micro computed tomography) technology forapplications in life sciences," Maas says. "That was complementary to our MRItechnology and overlapped with various markets. We see this field as growingand I see it as a continuing growth opportunity for Bruker BioSpin, and the Carestreamopportunity came about just before this summer—they had decided to focus moreon their clinical business and decided to give up the preclinical imagingbusiness, and that gave us a chance to boost our own. They have a qualityproduct with an excellent team and this allows us to go to a wide variety ofcustomers, from biologists to larger-scale researchers, and offer them a quiverfull of technologies that are complementary and fit a range of budgets."

Maas explains that a key part of the strategy of BrukerBioSpin is to identify new fields of growing technology, like the micro-CTtechnology before, that can be tacked on to the existing product lines. Heacknowledges that MRI can be very expensive and is sensitive to economicconditions—including the still uncertain conditions worldwide—but says thatwith the growing interest in the technology and the excellent results beingseen from preclinical imaging, it's still a good time to do an acquisition ofthis kind.

Bruker and Nextval ink high-throughput screening pact

BILLERICA, Mass.—Bruker and Nextval have announced anagreement for the high-throughput screening of drugs and their metabolitesusing Bruker's ultrafleXtreme MALDI-TOF/TOF in conjunction with Nextval'sMassInsight technology.

The ultrafleXtreme mass spectrometer combines theacquisition speed of its 2 kHz smartbeam II laser with its Perpetual Ion Sourcefor unrivalled productivity, ensuring optimum performance for low concentrationhigh-throughput screening. The versatility of Bruker's Compass software allowsintegration with Nextval's screening technology to maximize sample density andreduce sample analysis costs, according to the companies.

Nextval's MassInsight screening technology is based on novelsurface chemistries coupled with unique microarray acoustic deposition methodsthat address critical needs in several industries including the pharmaceutical,testing and industrial markets.