Mitegen Announces Mutual Distribution Agreements with Omscientia

Improving customer access to industry leading products.

Ithaca, NY – May 26, 2011 – (PR.com) Mitegen LLC, a provider of innovative consumables for X-ray diffraction, crystallography and protein crystallization to academic, pharmaceutical, industrial and government researchers around the world, announced that it has signed mutual non-exclusive distribution agreements with Omscientia, a provider unique products for the crystallization of biological molecules.

The agreements set the framework to allow customer’s of either company to buy products from both sources under a single purchase order to either supplier.

"Omscientia is excited to partner with Mitegen and believe their products to be the most innovative and best available in the industry for crystal storage, mounting and diffraction. We feel our products cohesively complement one another's product offering in Structural Biology,” says Craig Sterling, CEO of Omscientia. “Our co-marketing relationship and mutual distribution agreement helps both companies grow our collective presence in the market. We look forward to our partnership with MiTeGen and the plans for future product releases from both companies, whether individually or collectively."

“We look to partner with the cutting-edge suppliers in our industry, and are therefore glad to partner with Omscientia in order to better leverage the strong market positions of both companies .” says Robert Newman, CEO of Mitegen. “The memb-PASS™ Screening Kits by Omscientia are an excellent addition to our product offering, and we are glad to support our customers by making these fine products available directly through Mitegen."

Customers can expect to be able to order Mitegen and Omscientia products, through either vendor, by early June, 2011.

About Mitegen
Mitegen designs, manufactures and distributes products for crystallization, crystallography and X-ray diffraction of proteins, viruses and small molecule/inorganic compounds, and for manipulation and measurement of small samples in cell biology, histology, clinical diagnostics, entomology, archaeology, art restoration and geology. Our customers include academic, medical, pharmaceutical, government and industrial laboratories in more than 40 countries.

Mitegen is based in Ithaca, NY. More information can be found at www.mitegen.com

Omscientia, Inc. to Offer the New JANSi UVEX ^TM Fluorescence Microscope for Protein Crystal Inspection and becomes the North American and European Distributor for JAN Scientific

Carlsbad, CA— April 8, 2011.   Omscientia, Inc., based in Carlsbad, CA, is pleased to announce that the company has entered into a distribution agreement with JAN Scientific to offer their new and innovative UVEX TM Imaging System.  The JANSi UV fluorescence microscope for protein crystallography captures both UV fluorescence and visible wavelength images from crystallization drops allowing for immediate detection and confirmation of protein crystals using LED illumination for UV excitation with no measurable crystal damage. 

”We are excited to offer the JANSi UVEX Imaging System to our customers globally.  We feel that this compliments our core mission to provide cutting edge technologies in protein crystallography,” comments Craig Sterling, CEO of Omscientia, Inc.  “JANSi is a truly innovative company in the field of imaging and microscopy with an excellent engineering and software development team.  Their imaging system is powerful yet incredibly easy-to-use, enabling the protein crystallographer to detect crystals that would often be missed with traditional imaging systems saving the crystallographer valuable time and resources.” 

Omscientia and JANSi are both excited about the new agreement and are looking forward to the opportunity to bring this highly innovative UV fluorescence imaging technology to the North American and European markets.  “The market has responded quickly, and with much interest in the UVEX Imaging System, featured at the West Coast Protein Crystallography Workshop in Monterey, CA” Mr. Sterling further noted.  The JANSi UVEX Imaging System is available to labs immediately and can be purchased through Omscientia.

About Jan Scientific
Based in Seattle, WA, JAN Scientific, Inc. is an optical instrumentation development company, whose first product aimed at the protein crystallography market has been their signature UVEX UV imager. The UVEX imager is modular and can be configured to fit the customer’s budget. The imager is available either as a stand-alone unit or as a part of an automation workcell. The imaging mode can be UV fluorescence, UV absorbance, or both.

Omscientia becomes the North American Distributor for Kyratec Life Science.

Carlsbad, CA — August 18, 2010.  Omscientia, Inc., based in Carlsbad, CA, is pleased to announce that the company has entered into a distribution agreement with Kyratec Life Science (International Sales) to offer their new and innovative line of PCR and Real-Time qPCR instruments in the United States and Canada.   The innovative and cutting edge instruments, including the brand new SuperCycler Linear Gradient Thermal Cycler, offer labs a complete, easy-to-use solution for thermal cyclers and real-time qPCR with features not found on other instruments in the market.
 
”We are excited to be Kyratec’s distributor and to have an opportunity to bring these amazing instruments to the market in North America,” comments Craig Sterling, CEO of Omscientia, Inc.  “Kyratec is a truly innovative company with an excellent engineering and manufacturing team.  Their instruments are incredibly easy-to-use, reliable, and require almost no programming.  The instruments have features not found on other instruments in the market-segment, and certainly not for the price.  With today’s labs being more budget conscious than ever, we feel that labs should not have to forego features, reliability or performance in order to obtain the latest technologies.”
 
Omscientia and Kyratec are both excited about the new agreement and are looking forward to the opportunity to bring these cutting edge instruments in to the North American markets.  “The market has responded quickly, and with much interest in the new SuperCycler, launched at the American Crystallographic Association conference in Chicago last month,” Mr. Sterling further noted.  The new Kyratec SuperCycler is available to labs immediately and can be purchased through Omscientia.  For more information on the new Kyratec SuperCycler please contact Omscientia.

About Kyratec Group
Kyratec, although a fairly new name on the Global scene has a highly dedicated core team with decades of experience in the research, design, manufacture, distribution & support of cutting edge bioscience products. This energy and knowledge has been channeled into the innovative, dynamic and forward thinking group, which is Kyratec.

Kyratec instrumentation, based in Brisbane Australia, designs and manufactures bioscience equipment including PCR, qPCR, Automation and more. Development and manufacturing of reagents and the international sales team are located with Kyratec Life Science in Seoul, Korea.

“Our fundamental goals are to move the industry forward with the next generation of innovation, reliability and user friendliness delivered at ground breaking value for money,” as described by Nick Stone, Managing Director of Kyratec Life Science.  For further information visit: www.Kyratec.com.

This Press Release is featured at:
Drug Discovery World Online
eBioNews

Omscientia to Offer the Zenobia Therapeutics Fragment Library for Fragment Screening

Carlsbad, CA— June 22, 2010.  Omscientia, Inc. is pleased to announce that the company has entered into a distribution agreement with Zenobia Therapeutics (La Jolla, CA) to offer the entire proprietary Zenobia Fragment Screening Library to labs commercially as a screening kit.  Omscientia is excited to be offering the unique Fragment Screen, which was developed by the Zenobia Therapeutics research team lead by CEO, Vicki Nienaber, pioneer of the Fragment Screening Method.
 
Fragment-based lead discovery, first reported in the mid-1990, is a powerful drug discovery tool yielding more than 10 clinical candidates.  Overall, these candidates have chemical properties more consistent with marketed drugs than candidates discovered by other methods in part because the starting points are low molecular weight.  Fragment hits usually bind very efficiently and have been optimized to IND candidates in less than 2 years.
 
When developed by Zenobia, the criteria for this library were far more stringent than the commonly quoted “rule-of-three.”  Potencies for compounds with these properties typically range from 1-10,000 uM.  Highly soluble (200mM in 100% DMSO), the library is suitable for screening with NMR, SPR and x-ray crystallography.  There are 352 compounds in total which ship as dry films in 96 well plates.  Compounds are pre-grouped into shape-diverse mixtures for crystallographic screens.
          
Omscientia and Zenobia Therapeutics are both excited about the new agreement and believe it will help make Fragment Screening more widely available to labs worldwide while also reducing the investment required to do fragment screening.  The Fragment Library is available immediately as a kit that can be purchased by labs wishing to employ Fragment-Based Lead Discovery.  For more information on the Zenobia Fragment Library please contact Omscientia or visit their website at www.Omscientia.com.

About Zenobia Therapeutics, Inc.
Based in La Jolla, California, Zenobia Therapeutics was founded June 1, 2008 by Vicki Nienaber, Robert Meadows and a team of scientists with over 100 combined years of experience in structure-directed drug design and fragment-based lead discovery.  Zenobia Therapeutics is focused on the strengths of fragment-based methods to find novel, drug-like compounds that will cross the blood-brain barrier.  Through close collaboration with leading experts in the field of neurodegenerative and psychiatric diseases, they are developing inhibitors for newly identified targets that may be rapidly tested in cell and animal models.
 
Working with foundations, research institutes and government agencies, they are discovering targeted treatments for rare diseases such as Parkinson’s and Huntington’s for which there is no cure.  Their cost effective approach produces clinical candidates without the significant investment required for large-scale high-throughput screening campaigns and the building of large organizations.  For further information visit: www.ZenobiaTherapeutics.com.

This Press Release is featured at:
Drug Discovery World Online
American Pharmaceutical Review
International Drug Discovery

Omscientia to Offer the Jena Bioscience Screens for Protein Crystallization

Carlsbad, CA — May 18, 2010.  Omscientia, Inc. is pleased to announce that the company has entered into a distribution agreement with Jena Bioscience (Jena, Germany) to offer the entire suite of protein crystallization products from Jena Bioscience. Omscientia will be offering Jena Bioscience’s products which include nucleotides and their non-natural analogs, recombinant proteins & protein production systems, and reagents for the crystallization of biological macromolecules.  For the crystallization of biological macromolecules - which is the bottle neck in determining the 3D-structure of any protein – Jena and Omscientia now offer specialized reagents for crystal screening, crystal optimization and phasing that can reduce the time for obtaining high quality crystals suitable for X-ray diffraction from several years to a few days.  The Jena Bioscience products are immediately available directly from Oscientia.  Jena Bioscience and Omscientia are both excited about the new agreement and believe it will help bring a wider array of choices to crystallographers in North America.

About Jena Bioscience GmbH
Based in Jena Germany, Jena Bioscience was founded by a team of scientists from the Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Physiology in Dortmund. 25+ years of academic know how were condensed into the company in order to develop innovative reagents and technologies for the life science market.  Since the start up in 1998, the company has evolved into an established global reagent supplier with more than 4.500 products on stock and a customer base in 50+ countries.

Jena Bioscience’s products include nucleotides and their non-natural analogs, recombinant proteins & protein production systems, reagents for the crystallization of biological macromolecules and tailor-made solutions for molecular biology and biochemistry.  For the crystallization of biological macromolecules - which is the bottle neck in determining the 3D-structure of any protein – Jena offers specialized reagents for crystal screening, crystal optimization and phasing that can reduce the time for obtaining high quality crystals suitable for X-ray diffraction from several years to a few days.  We combine highest quality standards for all our products with individualized customer support.  For further information visit: visit: www.JenaBioscience.com.