What is it about Agilent that allowed you to commercialise such innovative technology?
KM: Harkening back to its original roots in Hewlett Packard, Agilent has always been know for extremely strong engineering and product quality. No planned obsolescence here! But now we needed to throw biology in the mix. In the end, it’s really the teamwork that makes the difference. Let me provide an example. We utilize and in situ (synthesize the oligonucleotides on the glass one base at a time) inkjet-based printing process to manufacture our microarrays. In order to achieve the necessary process yields it was essential that mechanical and chemical engineers work in tandem with nucleic acid chemists to develop a robust production process. Although we utilize the standard ‘Caruthers, beta-cyano-ethyl phosphoramidites’ chemistry approach for synthesis, the picoliter-scale reactions required many critical design trade-offs. The team really did an outstanding job and we now have a very robust and scaleable production process. F&S: What do you think is very important when attempting to p
