Invitrogen
Encyclopedia
| Invitrogen | |
|---|---|
| Type | Public company Public company This is not the same as a Government-owned corporation.A public company or publicly traded company is a limited liability company that offers its securities for sale to the general public, typically through a stock exchange, or through market makers operating in over the counter markets... |
| Founded | 1987 |
| Location | Carlsbad, CA, USA Carlsbad, California -2010:The 2010 United States Census reported that Carlsbad had a population of 105,328. The population density was 2,693.1 people per square mile . The racial makeup of Carlsbad was 87,205 White, 1,379 African American, 514 Native American, 7,460 Asian, 198 Pacific Islander, 4,189 from other... |
| Key people | Gregory T. Lucier Chairman and CEO |
| Industry Industry Industry refers to the production of an economic good or service within an economy.-Industrial sectors:There are four key industrial economic sectors: the primary sector, largely raw material extraction industries such as mining and farming; the secondary sector, involving refining, construction,... |
Manufacturing Manufacturing Manufacturing is the use of machines, tools and labor to produce goods for use or sale. The term may refer to a range of human activity, from handicraft to high tech, but is most commonly applied to industrial production, in which raw materials are transformed into finished goods on a large scale... |
| Products Product (business) In general, the product is defined as a "thing produced by labor or effort" or the "result of an act or a process", and stems from the verb produce, from the Latin prōdūce ' lead or bring forth'. Since 1575, the word "product" has referred to anything produced... |
Chemical reagents, procedure kits, specialized laboratory supplies |
| Revenue Revenue In business, revenue is income that a company receives from its normal business activities, usually from the sale of goods and services to customers. In many countries, such as the United Kingdom, revenue is referred to as turnover.... |
$1.15 billion (2006) |
| Website Website A website, also written as Web site, web site, or simply site, is a collection of related web pages containing images, videos or other digital assets. A website is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network through an Internet... |
http://www.invitrogen.com/ |
Invitrogen Corporation (former NASDAQ symbol: IVGN) was a large, multinational biotechnology company headquartered in Carlsbad, California. In November 2008, a merger between Applied Biosystems
Applied Biosystems
Applied Biosystems, Inc. started as GeneCo , was the name of a pioneer biotechnology company founded in 1981 in Foster City, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area...
and Invitrogen was finalized. The new company is called Life Technologies
Life Technologies
Life Technologies is a global biotechnology company headquartered in Carlsbad, California. It possesses a portfolio of more than 9 million genetic research assays and custom solutions...
.
Founding
Invitrogen was founded in 1987 by Lyle Turner, Joe Fernandez, and William McConnell and was incorporated in 1989. The company initially found success with its kits for molecular cloningCloning
Cloning in biology is the process of producing similar populations of genetically identical individuals that occurs in nature when organisms such as bacteria, insects or plants reproduce asexually. Cloning in biotechnology refers to processes used to create copies of DNA fragments , cells , or...
— notably, The Librarian, a kit for making cDNA libraries, and the FastTrack Kit for mRNA isolation from biological samples.
William McConnell left the company in 1989.
In 1999 the company, which had reached sales of $33 million the prior year, went public, with a plan of consolidating biotechnology research boutique suppliers. The company had become quite successful at licensing technologies into its niche market, of cloning and expression, but determined that many niche leaders were not interested in licensing, and M&A needed to be added to the companies set of tools for growth.
Mergers and acquisitions
Invitrogen acquired Novatech, a leader in cloned protein characterization, within 60 days of going public. Then purchased ResGen, a leader in genomics and synthetic DNA chemistry, becoming a $100 million (annual sales) company within a year of its IPO.The business scope expanded significantly when it acquired the rival biotechnology
Biotechnology
Biotechnology is a field of applied biology that involves the use of living organisms and bioprocesses in engineering, technology, medicine and other fields requiring bioproducts. Biotechnology also utilizes these products for manufacturing purpose...
and cell culture
Cell culture
Cell culture is the complex process by which cells are grown under controlled conditions. In practice, the term "cell culture" has come to refer to the culturing of cells derived from singlecellular eukaryotes, especially animal cells. However, there are also cultures of plants, fungi and microbes,...
company Life Technologies/GIBCO in 2000. Since then, the company has continued to add technologies through a series of mergers and acquisitions, which have broadened its customer base and strengthened its intellectual property portfolio. Among these, established companies such as Ethrog Biotechnology, Molecular Probes (fluorescence
Fluorescence
Fluorescence is the emission of light by a substance that has absorbed light or other electromagnetic radiation of a different wavelength. It is a form of luminescence. In most cases, emitted light has a longer wavelength, and therefore lower energy, than the absorbed radiation...
-based detection), Dynal (magnetic bead–based separation), Panvera (proteins and assays for drug screening), InforMax (software for computational biology and bioinformatics), BioSource (cellular pathway analysis), CellzDirect (cell products and services for research) and Zymed and Caltag Laboratories (primary and secondary antibodies) have been brought under the Invitrogen brand.
In 2008, Invitrogen virtually doubled its size with the purchase of biotech instrumentation company Applied Biosystems
Applied Biosystems
Applied Biosystems, Inc. started as GeneCo , was the name of a pioneer biotechnology company founded in 1981 in Foster City, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area...
, maker of DNA sequencing and PCR machines and reagents. The company then renamed the overall organization as Life Technologies. The Invitrogen brand and most of the brands acquired still exist on product packaging, although the overall company is called Life Technologies. In summer 2010, the company acquired the computer chip DNA sequencing company Ion Torrent Systems. Through this history of acquisitions and continued product research and development, Invitrogen / Life Technologies now has over 50,000 products.
Key products and technologies
Utilizing this business strategy, Invitrogen now represents a large number of products: DynabeadsDynabeads
Dynabeads are superparamagnetic, monosized and spherical polymer particles with a consistent, defined surface for the adsorption or coupling of various bioreactive molecules or cells....
magnetic separation technology, GIBCO cell culture media and reagents, SuperScript reverse transcriptase
Reverse transcriptase
In the fields of molecular biology and biochemistry, a reverse transcriptase, also known as RNA-dependent DNA polymerase, is a DNA polymerase enzyme that transcribes single-stranded RNA into single-stranded DNA. It also helps in the formation of a double helix DNA once the RNA has been reverse...
, Platinum Taq polymerase
Taq polymerase
thumb|228px|right|Structure of Taq DNA polymerase bound to a DNA octamerTaq polymerase is a thermostable DNA polymerase named after the thermophilic bacterium Thermus aquaticus from which it was originally isolated by Thomas D. Brock in 1965...
, TOPO cloning
TOPO Cloning
TOPO Cloning is a molecular biology technique in which DNA fragments amplified by either Taq or Pfu polymerases are cloned into specific vectors without the requirement for DNA ligases.- Principle :...
and expression products, Novex protein electrophoresis
Gel electrophoresis
Gel electrophoresis is a method used in clinical chemistry to separate proteins by charge and or size and in biochemistry and molecular biology to separate a mixed population of DNA and RNA fragments by length, to estimate the size of DNA and RNA fragments or to separate proteins by charge...
products, and numerous fluorescent reagents such as Qdot nanocrystals
Quantum dot
A quantum dot is a portion of matter whose excitons are confined in all three spatial dimensions. Consequently, such materials have electronic properties intermediate between those of bulk semiconductors and those of discrete molecules. They were discovered at the beginning of the 1980s by Alexei...
and Alexa Fluor and SYBR
SYBR Green
SYBR Green I is an asymmetrical cyanine dye used as a nucleic acid stain in molecular biology. SYBR Green I binds to DNA. The resulting DNA-dye-complex absorbs blue light and emits green light . The stain preferentially binds to double-stranded DNA, but will stain single-stranded DNA with lower...
dyes. Invitrogen currently offers more than 25,000 products and services to support research in cellular analysis, genomics
Genomics
Genomics is a discipline in genetics concerning the study of the genomes of organisms. The field includes intensive efforts to determine the entire DNA sequence of organisms and fine-scale genetic mapping efforts. The field also includes studies of intragenomic phenomena such as heterosis,...
, proteomics
Proteomics
Proteomics is the large-scale study of proteins, particularly their structures and functions. Proteins are vital parts of living organisms, as they are the main components of the physiological metabolic pathways of cells. The term "proteomics" was first coined in 1997 to make an analogy with...
, and drug discovery
Drug discovery
In the fields of medicine, biotechnology and pharmacology, drug discovery is the process by which drugs are discovered or designed.In the past most drugs have been discovered either by identifying the active ingredient from traditional remedies or by serendipitous discovery...
, and has sought to leverage their extensive technology portfolio to address research problems in developing fields, including biodefense
Biodefense
Biodefense refers to short term, local, usually military measures to restore biosecurity to a given group of persons in a given area who are, or may be, subject to biological warfare— in the civilian terminology, it is a very robust biohazard response. It is technically possible to apply...
and environmental diagnostics, bioinformatics
Bioinformatics
Bioinformatics is the application of computer science and information technology to the field of biology and medicine. Bioinformatics deals with algorithms, databases and information systems, web technologies, artificial intelligence and soft computing, information and computation theory, software...
, epigenetics
Epigenetics
In biology, and specifically genetics, epigenetics is the study of heritable changes in gene expression or cellular phenotype caused by mechanisms other than changes in the underlying DNA sequence – hence the name epi- -genetics...
, and stem cell
Stem cell
This article is about the cell type. For the medical therapy, see Stem Cell TreatmentsStem cells are biological cells found in all multicellular organisms, that can divide and differentiate into diverse specialized cell types and can self-renew to produce more stem cells...
research.
Innovation and impact
Under a contract from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), the company developed a prototype hand-held pathogenPathogen
A pathogen gignomai "I give birth to") or infectious agent — colloquially, a germ — is a microbe or microorganism such as a virus, bacterium, prion, or fungus that causes disease in its animal or plant host...
detection system for the detection of multiple toxins such as ricin
Ricin
Ricin , from the castor oil plant Ricinus communis, is a highly toxic, naturally occurring protein. A dose as small as a few grains of salt can kill an adult. The LD50 of ricin is around 22 micrograms per kilogram Ricin , from the castor oil plant Ricinus communis, is a highly toxic, naturally...
, staphylococcal enterotoxin, and botulinum toxin
Botulinum toxin
Botulinum toxin is a protein produced by the bacterium Clostridium botulinum, and is considered the most powerful neurotoxin ever discovered. Botulinum toxin causes Botulism poisoning, a serious and life-threatening illness in humans and animals...
, as well as bacteria that cause anthrax
Anthrax
Anthrax is an acute disease caused by the bacterium Bacillus anthracis. Most forms of the disease are lethal, and it affects both humans and other animals...
, plague, and other diseases, in a single sample. Invitrogen was also awarded a contract to provide kits for detecting possible E. coli O157 contamination in food at the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing
Beijing
Beijing , also known as Peking , is the capital of the People's Republic of China and one of the most populous cities in the world, with a population of 19,612,368 as of 2010. The city is the country's political, cultural, and educational center, and home to the headquarters for most of China's...
, China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
. The monitoring program, based on World Health Organization
World Health Organization
The World Health Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations that acts as a coordinating authority on international public health. Established on 7 April 1948, with headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, the agency inherited the mandate and resources of its predecessor, the Health...
food standards, is conducted by the Beijing Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Olympic Food Safety program. Similarly, the company's PathAlert technology was selected to monitor Yersinia pestis
Yersinia pestis
Yersinia pestis is a Gram-negative rod-shaped bacterium. It is a facultative anaerobe that can infect humans and other animals....
, the causative agent of the plague, at the Torino Winter Games in 2006. Their Qubit platform for RNA, DNA, and protein quantitation was awarded an R&D 100 Award as being a "Top 100 Technologically Significant New Product" by R&D Magazine.
Invitrogen develops and introduces stem cell
Stem cell
This article is about the cell type. For the medical therapy, see Stem Cell TreatmentsStem cells are biological cells found in all multicellular organisms, that can divide and differentiate into diverse specialized cell types and can self-renew to produce more stem cells...
products. Among more than 1,200 products for stem cell research, the company offers an engineered stem cell line (BG01v/hOG) and various STEMPRO products for manual passaging of human embryonic stem cells (hESC), to promote hESC growth and expansion, and to allow scientists to ascertain hESC pluripotency.
Customer resources
Invitrogen offers as online resources the Linnea Online Guides and The Handbook—A Guide to Fluorescent Probes and Labeling Technologies. Linnea guides provide researchers with free access to research protocols, product selection and design tools, pathway maps, and gene information. Now in its tenth edition, The Handbook is designed as a reference for fluorescence detection technology and its application.Corporate management
- Gregory T. Lucier—Chairman and CEO
- David F. Hoffmeister—Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer
- Karen S. Gibson—Senior Vice President, Chief Information Officer
- Claude D. Benchimol, Ph.D.—Senior Vice President, Global R & D
- John A. Cottingham—Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary
- Peter Leddy, Ph. D.—Senior Vice President, Human Resources
- Paul Grossman—Senior Vice President, Strategy and Corporate Development
- Nicolas M. Barthelemy—Senior Vice President, Cell Culture Systems
- Kip Miller—Senior Vice President, BioDiscovery
- Amanda Clardy—Vice President, Investor Relations
- Kelli Richard—Vice President, Finance & Chief Accounting Officer
- Bernd Brust—Senior Vice President, Global Sales
- Siddhartha Kadia—Vice President, Global Marketing and eBusiness
Board of Directors
- Gregory T. Lucier—Chairman and CEO, Invitrogen Corporation
- Raymond V. Dittamore—Retired, Managing Partner, Ernst & Young, LLPErnst & YoungErnst & Young is one of the largest professional services networks in the world and one of the "Big Four" accountancy firms, along with Deloitte, KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers ....
- Donald W. Grimm—Founder, Chairman and President, Strategic Design
- Balakrishnan S. Iyer—Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Conexant SystemsConexantConexant Systems, Inc. is an American semiconductor company, formerly the semiconductor division of Rockwell International. Currently it's privately owned by Golden Gate Capital, an equity firm headquartered in San Francisco.-History:...
/Mindspeed - Bradley Lorimier—Former Senior Vice President, Human Genome Sciences, Inc.
- Ronald A. Matricaria—Former Chairman and CEO, St. Jude MedicalSt. Jude MedicalSt. Jude Medical, Inc. is a $16 billion global medical device company, with headquarters in Little Canada, Minnesota, United States, a suburb of St. Paul. The company sells products in more than 100 countries and has over 20 operations and manufacturing facilities worldwide. Its principal...
- Per A. Peterson, M.D., Ph.D.—Retired Chairman, Research & Development, Pharmaceuticals, Johnson & JohnsonJohnson & JohnsonJohnson & Johnson is an American multinational pharmaceutical, medical devices and consumer packaged goods manufacturer founded in 1886. Its common stock is a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the company is listed among the Fortune 500....
- W. Ann ReynoldsW. Ann ReynoldsWynetka Ann Reynolds is a zoologist and university administrator who has served as provost of the Ohio State University , chancellor of the California State University system , chancellor of the City University of New York , and president of the University of Alabama at Birmingham...
, Ph.D.—Retired, Former President, University of Alabama at BirminghamUniversity of Alabama at BirminghamThe University of Alabama at Birmingham is a public university in Birmingham in the U.S. state of Alabama. Developing from an extension center established in 1936, the institution became an autonomous institution in 1969 and is today one of three institutions in the University of Alabama System... - Jay M. Short, Ph. D.—Executive Director and Chairman, E. O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation
- David C. U'Prichard, Ph.D.—Former Chairman of Research and Development, SmithKline Beecham PLCGlaxoSmithKlineGlaxoSmithKline plc is a global pharmaceutical, biologics, vaccines and consumer healthcare company headquartered in London, United Kingdom...
; Former Chief Executive Officer, 3-Dimensional Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
External links
- Invitrogen company profile — Google FinanceGoogle FinanceGoogle Finance is a website launched on March 21, 2006 by Google. The service features business and enterprise headlines for many corporations including their financial decisions and major news events. Stock information is available, as are Adobe Flash-based stock price charts which contain marks...