General Company Description
Ventana Medical Systems Inc., established the Molecular Discovery Systems
(MDS) division to leverage the company's core business of
immunohistochemistry and in situ hybridization slide processing technology
in drug discovery and research laboratories. The Discovery® Series
systems are used to accelerate the discovery of new drug targets and
evaluate the safety of new drug candidates. These systems also are ideal
for hybridizing nucleic acid microarrays*, which can be used to identify
differential gene expressions between diseased and normal tissue, confirm
gene activity in tissue, identify proteins encoded by active genes and
evaluate the toxicity profile of new drug compounds. Ventana Medical
Systems is committed to providing quality instrumentation and reagents to
healthcare providers around the world, and MDS is dedicated to providing
the premier automated advanced slide staining systems for the scientific
research community.
Chief Drug Discovery/Genomics/Proteomics
Technologies Supported
High-throughput assays in the areas of:
- Immunohistochemistry
- Immunofluorescence
- In situ hybridization
- Fluorescent in situ hybridization
- DNA microarrays
- Tissue microarrays
Markets Served
Ventana Medical Systems' MDS division is focused on providing the most
advanced platform for automating the principal slide staining activities
involved in target and compound drug discovery. We serve the non-clinical
life science market composed of pharmaceutical companies, biotechnology
companies and academic institutions.
Major Products and Services
We are a leading provider of fully integrated systems, with a proven
platform consisting of instrumentation, reagents and software.
Discovery® XT system enables:
- Processing of IHC, ISH, FISH and FIHC tests independently or
simultaneously
- In situ hybridization using DNA, RNA and oligo probes performed on
tissue sections, cell preparations or chromosome spreads, using either
chromogenic or fluorescent detection methods
- cDNA and oligo microarray slide processing, including
pre-hybridization, denaturation, hybridization, stringency washes and
secondary detection options
- Automation of slide pretreatment processes including:
Baking
Deparaffinization
Enzyme treatment
Cell conditioning
Denaturation
Hybridization
Stringency washes
Antibody incubation
Detection
Counterstain
- Automation and standardization of the IHC, ISH, FIHC, FISH and DNA
microarray processes
- Consistent and reliable results with optimized detection chemistry
including: DAB Map™ (DAB), BlueMap™ (NBT/BCIP) and RedMap™ (Fast
Red) and QD Map™ (Quantum Dots)
Facilities
Ventana's international headquarters are located in Tucson, Arizona,
USA. The company is the leading provider of automated solutions for
clinical anatomic pathology and research laboratories worldwide. Ventana's
worldwide presence is supported by additional offices in Strasbourg,
France; Yokohama, Japan and Melbourne, Australia. Ventana's advanced
technologies have introduced consistent, reproducible and quality staining
to laboratories throughout the world.
