Symyx gets a 'life'
Symyx Inc. began life as a distinctly non-biotech company, using combinatorial techniques in the material sciences, even though these methods were originally applied to drug discovery. But the company's expertise in polymers has led it full circle to applications in the life sciences. SMMX, which recently completed a $77.5 million IPO, last week signed its first life sciences deal, with PE Biosystems Inc.
The companies plan to develop polymers for use in the $75 million market for slab gels and capillary formulations, which are used in electrophoresis to sequence and analyze DNA. SMMX (Santa Clara, Calif.) and PEB (Foster City, Calif.) hope to improve DNA sequencing and analysis by creating polymers that allow for longer reads of DNA in the same runtime...