Invitrogen

|Products | Chemical reagents, procedure kits, specialized laboratory supplies |- style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;" |Revenue | $1.15 billion (2006) |- style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;" |Website | http://www.invitrogen.com/ |}

Invitrogen Corporation (Nasdaq: IVGN) is a multinational biotechnology company headquartered in Carlsbad, California. It is one of the largest biotechnology companies in the world.

History

Founding

Invitrogen was founded in 1987 by Lyle Turner and Joe Fernandez, and was incorporated in 1989. The company initially found success with its kits for molecular cloning—notably, The Librarian, a kit for making cDNA libraries, and the FastTrack kit for mRNA isolation from biological samples.

Mergers and acquisitions

Invitrogen's business scope expanded significantly when it acquired the rival biotechnology and cell culture company Life Technologies/GIBCO in 2000. Since then, the company has continued to add key 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 Molecular Probes (fluorescence-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 for research) and Zymed and Caltag Laboratories (primary and secondary antibodies) have been brought into the Invitrogen brand family.

Portfolio

Key products and technologies

Utilizing this business strategy, Invitrogen now represents a large number of products: Dynabeads magnetic separation technology, GIBCO cell culture media and reagents, SuperScript reverse transcriptase, Platinum Taq polymerase, TOPO cloning and expression products, Novex protein electrophoresis products, and numerous fluorescent reagents such as Qdot nanocrystals and Alexa Fluor and SYBR dyes. Invitrogen currently offers more than 25,000 products and services to support research in cellular analysis, genomics, proteomics, and drug discovery, and has sought to leverage their extensive technology portfolio to address research problems in developing fields, including biodefense and environmental diagnostics, bioinformatics, epigenetics, and stem cell research.

Innovation and impact

Invitrogen has made significant technological contributions in many diverse areas of research and development. Under a contract from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), the company developed a prototype hand-held pathogen detection system for the detection of multiple toxins such as ricin, staphylococcal enterotoxin, and botulinum toxin, as well as bacteria that cause anthrax, plague, and other diseases, in a single sample. Invitrogen has also been awarded a contract to provide kits for detecting possible E. coli O157 contamination in food at the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing, China. The monitoring program, based on World Health Organization 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, the causative agent of the plague, at the Torino Winter Games in 2006. Additionally, their Qubit platform for RNA, DNA, and protein quantitation was recognized as a "Top 100 Technologically Significant New Product" by R&D Magazine.

Through the development and introduction of stem cell products, Invitrogen has been an outspoken leader in the scientific community in support of stem cell research. Among more than 1,200 products tailored to facilitate the stem cell research workflow, the company offers an engineered stem cell line (BG01v/hOG) and various STEMPRO products designed to simplify manual passaging of human embryonic stem cells (hESC), to promote hESC growth and expansion, and to allow scientists to quickly ascertain hESC pluripotency.

Customer resources

With its Linnea Online Guides and The Handbook—A Guide to Fluorescent Probes and Labeling Technologies, Invitrogen has established itself as an online information resource. Linnea guides are designed to facilitate experimental design by providing researchers with free access to research protocols, product selection and design tools, pathway maps, and gene information. Now in its tenth edition, The Handbook has become a reference for fluorescence detection technology and its application.

Corporate operations

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, LLP
• Donald W. Grimm—Founder, Chairman and President, Strategic Design
• Balakrishnan S. Iyer—Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Conexant Systems/Mindspeed
• Bradley Lorimier—Former Senior Vice President, Human Genome Sciences, Inc.
• Ronald A. Matricaria—Former Chairman and CEO, St. Jude Medical
• Per A. Peterson, M.D., Ph.D.—Retired Chairman, Research & Development, Pharmaceuticals, Johnson & Johnson
• W. Ann Reynolds, Ph.D.—Retired, Former President, University of Alabama at Birmingham
• 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 PLC; Former Chief Executive Officer, 3-Dimensional Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

External links

• Invitrogen company profile — Google Finance