History
2000 NextGen Sciences was established in May 2000 by cofounders Dr Kevin Auton, CEO, and David Wigley, Director of Operations, to address the protein research market. It is expected that this market will grow to $9 billion by 2009 (Frost and Sullivan, Front Line Strategic Consulting). Since foundation, the company has evolved to become a leading provider of integrated solutions for protein research.
NextGen Sciences has successfully launched award winning technologies, won over £0.75 million in grant awards, established offices in Cambridgeshire, UK, and currently employs 35 people.
 |
2002 The company's first product was launched in 2002, The ProteinArray Workstation™, which is now marketed by PerkinElmer Life and Analytical Sciences. The unique technology is flexible, fully automated system for processing multiple protein microarrays based on standard microscope slide formats. |
In 2002, NextGen Sciences won a LINK Applied Genomics award to fund a three-way initiative with the University of Cambridge and Cytomyx. The three year programme of work is focusing on the creation of protein biochips for diagnosis of breast cancer. The research is progressing well and it is hoped that these chips will be used globally by researchers in the field.
2003 The second technology to be launched by NextGen Sciences in 2003 was the expressionfactory™, which is the first commercially available technology to fully automate protein expression, from gene to protein. Following the activation of a gene, gene fragment or domain using Invitrogen’s Gateway technology, the advanced system expresses each gene in parallel, in multiple vectors. Uniquely, the expressionfactory also grows each of the newly created cell lines in parallel, before purifying all of the different versions of each protein. This is achieved without user supervision or intervention.
 |
The expressionfactory™ allows a matrix approach for the cloning and expression of any gene, increasing the chances of successfully isolating useful protein. |
2005 was a pivotal year for NextGen Sciences. The original CEO Dr Kevin Auton left the company and was replaced by Dr James Heffernan. Following a strategic review the company launched a number of new products including the baculoworkstation™; contractexpress™ and the first expressionworkstation™ was successfully demonstrated to customers. The company achieved public status by listing on the UK AIM market as of 30th Dec.
2006 was a busy year for NextGen Sciences. The company launched optigels™;a new range of pre-cast 2D electrophoresis gels offering exceptional reproducibility and ease of use. They expanded their contractexpress™ service by acheiving one of the milestones in the agreement with Gene Oracle with the launch of a new service for Gene Synthesis.
In November 2006 NextGen Sciences announced that it had acquired Proteomic Research Services Inc. ("PRS"), a company that specialises in the identification and characterisation of proteins, based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA.