From Wikipedia,
the free encyclopedia.
Affymetrix was founded
by
Stephen P.A. Fodor, Ph.D. and
others in the late
1980s with the revolutionary
idea to use
semiconductor manufacturing
techniques to create GeneChips (an
Affymetrix trademark) or
generically
DNA microarrays. The company
has an impressive
patent portfolio in this area.
Affymetrix was originally a
division of Affymax.
The company was spun out of
Affymax in
1992. They launched their
first product, an
HIV
genotyping GeneChip, in
1994. Affymetrix went public
in 1996.
Acquisitions have included
Genetic MicroSystems for
slide-based microarrays and
scanners and
Neomorphic for
bioinformatics. In
2000
Perlegen Sciences was spun out
to focus on wafer-scale genomics
for massive data creation and
collection required for
characterizing population variance
of genomic markers and expression
for the drug discovery process.
Early on Affymetrix formed a
partnership with
Hewlett-Packard Chemical
Analysis, now
Agilent Life Sciences. That
relationship soured and now the
two companies are competitors.
Today Affymetrix manufactures its
own scanner hardware.
