Proteome Systems, Shimadzu team up in US push

Japanese instruments specialist Shimadzu Scientific and the US arm of Australia's Proteome Systems will tighten their US collaboration, announcing today that they have agreed to team up on the application support of their jointly-developed proteomics products, Xcise and Chip.

"We've been working with Shimadzu for some time at a technical level," said Proteome Systems CEO Keith Williams. "Shimadzu are sensational engineers -- but to sell [the products] you need application support. We've found that in the US we need to work closely with them. Before, Shimadzu was driving the sales and now we've decided to do that together."

Xcise and ChIP are sample preparation and protein identification technologies used for high-throughput protein analysis. Proteome Systems manufactures ChIP, and Shimadzu makes Xcise, as well as other proteomics products including MALDI(AXIMA-CFRplus and AXIMA-QIT), 2D-HPLC and LC-MALDI spotting robot, AccuSpot.

The new agreement will give Proteome Systems access to Shimazu's facility in western California, adding a west-coast presence at which customers can see demonstrations of the products. "On the back of that we'll build our sales and marketing team," Williams said.

Proteome Systems' strategy has been to partner closely with companies that have complementary expertise or technology. In addition to its Shimadzu joint venture, Proteome Systems also has a long-running alliance with IBM and a joint venture with Charles River Laboratories, one of the leading biomedical contract services groups in the US.