Luminex has extended their global supply and distribution agreement with EMD Millipore—the life science division of Merck, of Darmstadt, Germany. Luminex develops, manufactures and markets innovative biological testing technologies with applications throughout the clinical diagnostic and life science industries.

"EMD Millipore's broad selection of protein biomarkers in diverse research areas such as cancer, cell signaling, cellular metabolism, and immunology reflects their leadership in the life science research market,” said Michael F. Pintek, senior vice president of operations at Luminex.

As part of the agreement, EMD Millipore will continue to offer the full range of Luminex's xMAP systems, including MAGPIX, Luminex 100/200, and FLEXMAP 3D. Luminex technology is widely supported and validated across both clinical and life science research markets, with cumulative shipments to date nearing 10,000 total instruments and over 16,000 publications across a broad spectrum of applications.

"This renewal of our partnership with Luminex ensures that EMD Millipore can provide customers with a complete solution for multiplexed protein detection—encompassing assay kits, instruments, software and services—that will support them over the years," said John Sweeney, head of life sciences business, EMD Millipore.

EMD Millipore has continued to push into emerging areas of research and recently announced the availability of MILLIPLEX map human stem cell pluripotency kits and MILLIPLEX map kits for cellular metabolism. Compared with traditional biomarker detection techniques such as western blots, these new kits increase assay throughput and specificity. Additionally, EMD Millipore recently released the newest version of their best-in-class multiplex data analysis package, MILLIPLEX Analyst 5.1 software—a data analysis tool available for Luminex platform-based multiplexed immunoassays.