ABSTRACT

Caliper Technologies was founded on the technologies originating in many of these research labs. During 1999, Caliper introduced its first two LabChip systems-a personal laboratory system for the life sciences market and a high-throughput screening system to aid pharmaceutical companies in discovering new drugs. Codeveloped with Agilent, the first laboratory system consists of the Agilent 2100 bioanalyzer, a desktop instrument designed to perform a wide range of scientific experiments using a menu of different LabChip kits. Each kit contains chips and reagents designed for specific applications. The LabChip system brings the benefits of miniaturized, integrated, and automated experimentation to the researcher’s desktop. Agilent launched this product in September 1999. Current applications include DNA and RNA analysis. Figure 11 shows the Agilent 2100 bioanalyzer. The analyzer works with a series of chips optimized for DNA and RNA analysis, e.g., the DNA 7500 LabChip assay kit provides size and concentration information for DNA fragments ranging in size from 100 to 7500 base pairs.