June 2009 VOLUME 2 ISSUE 2

Revving Up... with New Products

Robert Wicke, Vice President, Product Development
rwicke@fortebio.com

It’s an exciting time for Product Development here at ForteBio. For the last year, the development teams have been working non-stop on the next generation instruments for the Octet platform. The newest additions to the lineup are the Octet QK384, tuned for high-throughput quantitation; and the Octet RED384, geared towards high-end, fast kinetics.

Both instruments were built from the ground up to be fully automation compatible — even the front door was designed to come off for those tight robot configurations — and both have the ability to read half-well and 384-well plates.

Along with the new hardware comes exciting new software. With the launch of version 6, users can acquire and analyze their data easier and faster than ever before. With acquisition, we added the ability to easily replicate time-consuming steps, and you can load and save your favorite protocols as templates to get up and running within seconds.

On the analysis side, the flexibility of how and what to analyze has increased with the addition of new standard curve and binding rate equations for quantitation, and a heterogeneous 2:1 model for kinetics. Researchers will find the new Grouped View in Kinetics to be an extremely powerful visualization tool as well; it lets you group and graph your data in any way you want. Want to see each compound and each biosensor graphed separately with curve fits and steady-state? Easy! You’ll wonder how you ever lived without these visualization capabilities.

Our pipeline for new biosensors and assay kits is also strong and exciting. On the pure Research and Development front, we’re developing methods to greatly increase our sensitivity using unique substrates and conjugates and improving the regeneration of all our biosensors.

We are also hard at work developing several quantitation solutions like Immunogenicity assay kits and others for detection of low levels of contaminants. These are due to launch this year, with enhancements to our Amine Reactive biosensor coming early next year.

I hope that all of you see an increase in productivity with these new capabilities and enjoy using these products in 2009 as much as we did creating them. Thank you for your support and I look forward to hearing from you.

ForteBio Decreases the Cost of Doing Research

Rick Gordon, Sales Manager
rgordon@fortebio.com

The recent American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (ARRA) legislation provides an unprecedented level of funding ($8.2 billion in extramural funding) to the NIH to help stimulate the US economy through the support and advancement of scientific research. The ARRA also provides $300 million for shared instrumentation and other capital equipment to support all NIH activities.

To support academic and government research activities, ForteBio is offering researchers a generous price break to help them acquire the Octet platform. Using a novel dip and read method that minimizes sample preparation and eliminates microfluidics, the Octet platform can reduce ELISA running costs by almost 50%, and kinetic characterization (ka, kd, KD) costs by almost 66%. Laboratories that have transitioned from ELISA techniques to the Octet platform have improved their productivity by 50 to 70 percent, with no additional costs. ForteBio’s off-the-shelf biosensors enable the cost per well to begin at approximately 10 cents. In a tough economic environment, the Octet platform can help reduce operational costs while improving your lab’s productivity.

The Literature References web page on our web site (www.fortebio.com) lists a number of peer-reviewed and other publications describing the use of the Octet platform in various applications in life science research and development.

ForteBio can assist with shared instrumentation grants, R01 and supplemental grants and NIH Challenge Grants, and are happy to support your grant-writing requirements. To learn more about the Octet platform and to take advantage of our promotional pricing in support of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, email us at sales@fortebio.com or contact us by phone at (650) 322-1360.