CED’s Biotech 2010 was held at the Raleigh Convention Center on February 22 and 23. According to the opening remarks of Joan Siefert Rose, President of CED, the conference boasted the largest collection of venture capitalists ever collected in North Carolina.

The conference focused on the business of biotech, with special attention paid to mergers, partnering, and all other ways to find funding. The major topic of discussion was adapting to the current economic environment. With the United States economy continuing to show no major signs of improvement, funding for research and development is more difficult to find. In addition, the development of biotechnologies and the possibility of health care reform in Washington are giving non-traditional business models more of a chance to come to the forefront, creating more uncertainty for investors.

For example, many panelists indicated that they felt the era of the “blockbuster” pharmaceutical drug was over. The idea is that personalized medicine will offer a new business model with a focus on drugs with a smaller, better specified target population. Research in biomarkers is expected to lead to continuously improved diagnostics and the possibility of combining diagnostics with therapeutics in ways not possible before.

The role of the initial public stock offering (IPO) in the panels also indicated a new era in financing. In today’s economic environment, the IPO, according to most panelists, is no longer a good option for most private start-ups. RTP’s own Talecris received kudos for being the most (and possibly only, depending on who you ask) successful IPO of the last year in the biotech industry. With the stock market and venture capital looking for safer investments, most panelists found biotech companies looking for increasingly more “non-dilutive” capital, which includes corporate partnerships/alliances, government funding, and grants.

The highlight of the conference for many attendees was a powerful speech given by Billy Tauzin, President and CEO of Pharmaceuticals Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA). Tauzin served Louisiana’s third district in Congress for 25 years – from 1980-1995 as a Democrat and from 1995-2005 as a Republican. Discussing the current political environment, Tauzin bemoaned the current state of hyper-partisanship. He warned against the use of reconciliation or the so-called “nuclear option” for passage of health care reform in the Senate, feeling that the use of either could only make the partisan political environment worse and hurt both political parties in the future.

Mixed in with Tauzin’s highly relevant political observations was a highly personal story about his own battle with cancer. He thanked the members of the audience for their work and warned against another type of partisanship within the science community. In the middle of a conference that mixed large pharmaceutical companies and small biotech start-ups, he emphasized that it is all one industry and encouraged the attendees not to separate the interests of PhRMA from biotech in general.

etonBlog Uncategorized biomarkers, CED Biotech 2010, NC Biotech, personalized medicine

We have a huge vendor show coming up at Duke University on March 17 from 10 am- 2 pm in the Searle Center. We would absolutely love to have you come in and see us as we are giving away a $100 gift card to 10 new customers. Customers who are spending $200 or more with new peptide synthesis orders from us also qualify. This also qualifies for our genomic services. So please come if you want to win. Check out the link at the bottom for more details on the other cool giveaways.

A complete list of all attendants are:
Qiagen, Fran Moses, Jeremy Sanders, & Greg Bauer

PerkinElmer, Julie Ginsler

LABREPCO, David Freeman/ Carrie Kanaby

Gemini Bio-Products, Tom Pecora

Your browser may not support display of this image. BioExpress, Rob Blackman

Bioline, Clint Trapp

Thermo/Dharmacon Products, Jim Moore

Fermentas, Matt Purdy

BMG Labtech, Scott Klayner

Bio-Rad Laboratories, Tin Le & Arielle Linderman

USA Scientific, Ethan Suttles

Invitrogen/Life Technologies, Dean Gillespie

Millipore, Ed Landers

Triangle Scientific, Kim Smith

Eton Bioscience, Richard Tsai

Affymetrix/USB Products, Eric Goldman

Sigma-Aldrich, Lindi Saunders

Pureflow Inc., Rick Lesh

Roche, Peter Bent

Dharmacon, Jim Moore

AnaSpec, Betsy Johnson

Pureflow, Rick Lesh

Bellco Biotechnology, Russ Willard

Bio-Rad Laboratories, Tin Le

Cell Signaling, Vicki McCulloch

Triangle Scientific, Kim Smith

AbD Serotec, Leah Hammond/Melinda Williams

2010 St. Patrick’s Day Duke Show

etonBlog Uncategorized $100 gift card, Duke, genomic services, Peptide Synthesis, St. Patricks Day

We have a show tomorrow at University of Houston tomorrow from 11:30-1pm. Lunch will be provided for everybody, and we have a special promotion on our Houston DNA Sequencing Services and our peptide synthesis service.

If you are in Houston and can’t attend the event then email marketing@etonbio.com and we can send you the details.

Hope to see you there!

etonBlog Uncategorized Houston DNA Sequencing, peptide synthesis services, promotional pricing, University of Houston

We are having two shows at Rice today and we would love for our researchers or anyone interested in our Houston DNA Sequencing Services or our peptide synthesis services can come to enjoy food, drinks, and promotional pricing that is only eligible for trade shows this week. If you cannot come to the show or are in Houston in general and want in on this promotion please email marketing@etonbio.com.

etonBlog Uncategorized BRC, George R. Brown Building, Houston DNA Sequencing, promotional pricing, Rice University, Vendor Show

We are excited to announce that we are going to have another trade show at the Texas Commons area in the heart of the Medical Center.

Breakfast food will be provided for everyone, and we have a lot of new information to go over with our customers. We have t-shirt sign up contests, as well as special pricing for our vendor show participants. If you want to get locked into a special quote with us over the next couple of months,  come see us.

For a full list and all the best information about the show, please visit the link below.

Commons Vendor Show and Brunch.2-23-10

We would love to help you find out why we are quickly becoming Houstons best DNA Sequencing service

etonBlog Uncategorized DNA Sequencing, Houston, special pricing, Texas Commons

Ever thought of putting extra lab space on Craigslist? Would you trust advice from FriendFeed over a lab manual? Do you know what putting your data in “The Cloud” could do for your lab’s workflow?

These were the types of questions asked and answered at Science Online 2010, a conference in RTP designed specifically to give science researchers and bloggers a common forum. Hosted at the Sigma Xi Center between January 14-17, the conference focused on the ways new Internet technology is changing how science is done and how information is distributed.

A wide variety of topics were covered using the unconference format, where the presentations were not lectures so much as large discussion groups. The program catered to all levels techie. The novice could learn what Twitter is and how to tweet, the casual follower was presented with a variety of demos to further spark their interest, and the advanced IT gurus could learn from other members in the audience, as the conference allowed for a unique overlap of experts from academia, industry, and the blogosphere.

New Internet technology is allowing mass participation and collaboration on a scale not seen before. Blogs continue to grow in number and variety as more and more scientists and journalists use them as alternative outlets for their material. While the conference is evidence enough that the science blogosphere is here to stay, two other major areas of new Internet technology – social networking and cloud computing – are not yet as commonplace among scientists, yet offer even more potential to change how scientific research is done and shared.
Social Networking

The general consensus of the conference was that social networking has so far failed to live up to its potential for collaboration among scientists. A large variety of social networking sites have been launched specifically aimed at scientists, but thus far none has caught on. The only one that drew a partial recommendation from the crowd was Epernicus. LinkedIn, a more general networking site, got some recommendations from the crowd to use as an online address book, but no social networking website offers a community specifically tailored to scientists.

The one exception is FriendFeed. For those of you who are unaware, FriendFeed is the main competitor to Twitter. The conference showed evidence of an ongoing argument between users of each respective site reminiscent of PC vs. Mac. Scientists at the conference in general preferred FriendFeed, praising the chance for more in-depth discussion that is possible in the public discussion groups. Specifically, “The Life Scientists” group was highly recommended.

In The Cloud

When your work is “in the cloud,” everything is done and exists on the Internet. This allows for easier access across different workstations and simplifies collaboration on shared documents, among many, many things. Not surprisingly, cloud computing was pioneered and remains most popular among computer scientists. However, recent years have seen the concept catch-on everywhere it can. Google is the most well-known leader in the new technology and Google Wave specifically is the biggest attempt to bring the cloud style of working to everyone. Cloud computing is broken down into three general areas:

o SAAS: Software as a Service (e.g. Basecamp)
o IAAS: Infrastructure as a Service (e.g. Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud)
o PAAS: Platform as a Service (e.g. PayPal)

For scientists these new technologies open up many new possibilities for analysis and collaboration. The casual armchair scientist, by using the cloud, can now access datasets and computing power that can match all but the largest research institutions. Even for members of such research institutions, the cloud provides an attractive plan B for outsourcing work that might be more difficult to accomplish within an existing administrative structure.

Cloud computing offers a whole new way of doing things, but don’t kiss your hard drive goodbye just yet. The universal recommendations from the conference were to be sure to back-up everything that is essential and to keep private materials out of the cloud.

For all you life scientists interested in what all this new technology has in store for you, be sure to check out BioGPS, a website (http://biogps.gnf.org/) created by the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation (GNF) that is devoted to compiling all existing genetic resources. If you like the looks of it, be sure to see how they’ll be “going social” in 2010 (http://biogps.blogspot.com/ – announced February 1).

etonBlog Uncategorized BioGPS, cloud computing, Eton Bioscience, friendfeed, RTP, SciOnline

The beta ends this friday and the full launch of our Houston Branch begins the upcoming Monday.  Eton Bioscience will offer its main core services of DNA Sequencing, Primer Walking, Peptide Synthesis, PCR purification, etc. As well as a same day delivery service for many of its top products from the lactate assay kits, to the revolutionary alternative to coomassie blue, BlueFast.

The medical center has a cut off time to order by 3 pm in the afternoon for sequencing, and those at places that are over 40 minutes away, like UH-Clear Lake, UTMB, etc will be a 9 am cut off time. For all products ordered that want same day delivery, they need to order by 9 am in order to qualify for a possible same day delivery, next day delivery.

If you would like to get a quote feel free to contact us: http://www.etonbio.com/quotationRequest.php

etonBlog Uncategorized Bluefast, Coomassie Blue, DNA Sequencing, DNA Sequencing Services, Eton Bio, Lactate Assay kits, Primer Walking, Protein Synthesis

We have two significant changes to our ordering process that will help us to ensure we get  your results to you the way you want them every time.

Our First Change is:

Email Address Modification

It is now possible to modify the email addresses that your DNA sequencing results will be sent to after placing your order.  To do so, click on the “Modify Order” link on your member page (just below the “Place Order” link), select the appropriate order number, and change the “Send Results to your email address?” and “Edit Email Addresses” sections as necessary.  After making your changes be sure to click the “Update Order” button at the bottom of the screen or your changes will not be saved.

Please note that modifications must be made before the sequencing data is sent to be effective.  To be safe, please modify email addresses by 5pm of the day your order is placed to assure that a customer service representative will be available to confirm your modification.  Also, results will not be resent if modifications are made to old orders.  If you would like the data from any of your previous orders resent (or sent to a different email address), please send your request to support@etonbio.com.

Our Second Change is:

The Sample Concentration Column

On our online DNA sequencing order form there is now a separate column (located between the “Sample Concentration” and “Primer Name” columns) dedicated to “Sample Size”.  Now you can easily enter unique sample size information for each reaction on your orders.  If you create orders by copying and pasting from an Excel file, please take account of the extra column to be sure your primer information (i.e. name and concentration) is located in the appropriate columns.

If you have any questions or suggestions about how to improve further feel free to call our support line, or comment below!

etonBlog Uncategorized changes, DNA Sequencing, help, ordering process

Eton Bioscience recently just released a brand new product, BlueFast. Bluefast is an excellent alternative to using coomassie blue for your SDS-Page because you can completely stain your protein in 10 minutes and you can completely remove the destain step. We have loved using it in the lab, mainly because of how much time it cuts down, and that you can start on the next step of your research so much faster.

Our sizes start at 100 ml, which is $30. However, if you would like to try it out, we have a 50ml trial version.
Which you can definitely try out in three different ways:

Join our facebook page and comment on the wall that you want to try BlueFast:

http://facebook.com/etonbio

Twitter about wanting to try bluefast with @etonbio in the tweet.

Post about it on your blog and link below in the comments.

Feel free to contact support@etonbio.com or marketing@etonbio.com with any questions.

etonBlog Uncategorized Bluefast, Coomassie Blue, facebook, SDS-Page, Twitter

We have two new jobs showing up.

One is in North Carolina for a Part-time intro to Biotech Sales position.
Job is to learn all aspects of Biotech Sales, directly sell DNA Sequencing, Peptide
Synthesis, and new products to customers in the North Carolina region. Also aid
with market research, flyer design, customer support, etc. if you are interested please
email Richard@etonbio.com with your resume.

The other is at the Houston Branch and is a part-time lab technician position in the late afternoon.
Incudes PCR, PCR Purification, set-up, clean-up and plate purification at night. If you are interested
please email Holly@etonbio.com with your resume.

Both Positions may turn into full time positions depending on your schedule and how well you fit the team.

etonBlog Uncategorized biotech, DNA Sequencing, Houston, job opporunities., jobs, marketing, North Carolina, PCR purification, sales