GE Healthcare and Applied Biosystems announce licence agreement

UK-based GE Healthcare confirmed it has finalised a licence deal with Applied Biosystems.

As part of the licence agreement, the California-based company is granted access to patents belonging to GE Healthcare covering the biomagnetic isolation and purification of nucleic acids.

GE Healthcare, which is a wholly-owned division of American firm General Electric, states that its patented procedures for biomagnetic isolation offer a number of benefits including the elimination of clogging and greater levels of production yields.

“We are pleased to grant Applied Biosystems access to our patents in this area, which will allow them to use our proprietary magnetic separation protocols in conjunction with their MagMaxTM range of products for nucleic acid isolation,” commented Eric Roman, general manager of genomic sciences at the UK company.

He added that the licence agreement demonstrates the “considerable value” of the firm’s isolation technology to researchers specialising in the field of genomics.

The payment terms of the deal were not revealed by GE Healthcare, which operates a scheme enabling other pharmaceutical enterprises to benefit from access to its patented technologies.

Applied Biosystems and Celera Genomics are the two tracking stocks of Applera and both companies are listed on the New York Stock Exchange.