News & Events

Select IDEA04 winners are highlighted in the July 5th issue of BusinessWeek. A complete list of IDEA04 winners can be found in BusinessWeek online. IDSA's quarterly magazine, Innovation, will publish information on IDEA04 winners in its Yearbook in the fall. In addition, as a Silver IDEA04 winner, BD Biosciences will participate in the IDEA product exhibit at the IDSA's 2004 Design Gallery during the IDSA national conference in Pasadena, CA, October 27-30, 2004.

"Winning a Silver IDEA04 is a tremendous honor," said Kip Miller, Vice President and General Manager of BD Biosciences Pharmingen. "The BD FACSArray™ bioanalyzer's design was based on identified user needs and market trends. We hope the design of this system will make flow cytometry accessible to a wider range of life science researchers and will help advance biomedical discovery."

The BD FACSArray™ bioanalyzer is a compact, benchtop flow cytometry system for fast, sensitive high-content analysis of cells and proteins in cell biology, immunology, and drug discovery. It includes an integrated 96-well plate sampler, an optical detection unit, a computer workstation, acquisition and analysis software, and recommended applications.

As a new, powerful, and lower-cost flow cytometry system featuring near "plug and play" simplicity, the bioanalyzer was given a distinctive design consistent with user needs and market trends, such as automation, higher throughput, smaller sample volumes, precision, and multiplexing of data. Special effort was undertaken to design an intuitive user interface to support fast adoption in a broad range of laboratory settings.

One of the most significant benefits of this system is high sampling speed, which is achieved by combining novel plate sampler technology with digital electronics, generating acquisition rates of up to 15,000 events per second. A 96-well plate can be run in less than 35 minutes. Also, while most instruments of this nature use sample tubes, the BD FACSArray™ bioanalyzer uses a microtiter plate, requiring smaller sample volumes.

The system's design offers other benefits, including a small product footprint and recessed I/O panel that conserves highly valuable benchtop space, location of the microtiter plate sampler in the corner of the instrument to allow both front manual sample and side robotic sample loading modes by simply rotating the instrument 90 degrees, and convenient access to fluid reservoirs and fluidics filters.

In addition, the design of the BD FACSArray™ bioanalyzer helps users avoid some of the repetitive manual manipulations frequently associated with laboratory research. Overall, the bioanalyzer is an easy-to-use system, offering one-click maintenance protocols as well as system software to drive instrument control and support walk-away sample acquisition and batch analysis.

The BD FACSArray™ bioanalyzer has also been honored with a Bronze award in the IDSA Northwest Invitational Design Competition and was a winner in the medical category of Appliance Manufacturer Magazine's Excellence in Design competition.

BD is a medical technology company that serves healthcare institutions, life science researchers, clinical laboratories, industry, and the general public. BD manufactures and sells a broad range of medical supplies, devices, laboratory equipment, and diagnostic products. For the fiscal year ended September 30, 2003, BD reported total revenues of $4.528 billion.

For more information about the BD FACSArray™ bioanalyzer, visit www.bdbiosciences.com.

For Research Use Only. Not for use in diagnostic or therapeutic procedures.