FEATURE ARTICLE Chemagen Milestones & BioLegend Acquisition Mark Growth in Mag-Biotech at PerkinElmer Chemagen celebrates 25-year jubilee in Germany Signs of growth in its magnetic separations business are evident at PerkinElmer as its Chemagen unit in Germany marks 1 billion nucleic acid extractions, and the $5 billion acquisition of BioLegend in California adds to the portfolio. Chemagen recently celebrated its 25-year anniversary and reaching the milestone of more than 1 billion nucleic acid extractions with their instruments and kits for automated bio-separations. It started in business with the development of magnetic particles based on polyvinyl alcohol, referred to as M-PVA Magnetic Beads. They represent a new class of particles and allow applications in nearly every scientific field requiring the isolation of specific biomolecules. It does a sizeable business in helping biotech companies develop their own assays with the beads. Chemagen nanobeads feature high magnetite content for fast magnetic separation, even from large sample volumes, and polydisperse particles for a uniform reproducibility of magnetic separation A schematic representation of the M-PVA Magnetic Bead structure illustrates how particles of magnetite are embedded in the polyvinyl alcohol matrix conferring paramagnetic properties to them. The surface of the M-PVA Magnetic Beads can be functionalized with many different groups and modified with individually tuneable loadings. Due to their hydrophilic surface, the beads show very little affinity for most biological molecules, as compared to beads based on hydrophobic materials such as polystyrene. This feature makes their activated beads ideal for the separation of specific molecules from complex mixtures, says Chemagen. 16 Magnetics Business & Technology * May/June 2023 Chemagic 360 is flagship product for DNA and RNA purification www.MagneticsMag.comhttp://www.MagneticsMag.com