Fluidigm Opens Singapore's First Biochip Fab
Breakthrough technology to be introduced at company's first offshore R&D and Manufactured facility
Fluidigm Corporation, a U.S. pioneer in microfluidic technology, announced the opening of its first offshore R&D and manufacturing facility in Singapore. Privately held Fluidigm is headquartered in California, USA, and was founded in 1999.
Fluidigm uses proprietary processes to fabricate biochips that integrate thousands of nanovalves and other microscopic elements. These biochips are used in the life science industry to manipulate fluids in volumes as small as a nanolitre.
The Fluidigm-Singapore facility will assume full manufacturing by mid of 2006 for the highly complex IFC chips. The first product to be shipped from the 15,000- square-feet Singapore facility will be the TOPAZ Screening Chip. This is a specialized IFC biochip for protein crystallization, a research process used to study a protein's structure and, in doing so, assess its role in disease and suitability as a target for drug therapies.
Fluidigm's biochips are fabricated using patented multilayer soft lithography, an innovative technology that enables the integration of thousands of micro- mechanical components on a biochip made of an elastomeric rubber material. By tapping the existing skills and infrastructure, Fluidigm-Singapore will establish a highly efficient manufacturing base for an evolving technology in the biotechnology field. The company is developing next generation products that accommodate exponential increases in functionalities and corresponding decreases in feature size.
In addition to manufacturing, Fluidigm-Singapore will play a key role in process research and development, supporting the development of manufacturing and process technologies for the fabrication of these new products. The IFC technology is foreseen to have unlimited potential for diverse applications requiring mixing and metering nanoliter volumes in a massively parallel fashion.
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