News

Posted On: 10/24/2005

Fluidigm Opens Singapore's First Biochip Plant

PharmaManufacturing.com

Fluidigm Corp., a U.S. pioneer in microfluidic technology, on Oct. 24 held the grand opening of its first offshore R&D and manufacturing facility in Singapore. Founded in 1999 and headquartered in South San Francisco, Calif., privately held Fluidigm has won several awards for its novel technology. Fluidigm's customers include top global pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.

Fluidigm uses proprietary processes to fabricate biochips that integrate thousands of nanovalves and other microscopic elements. These biochips are used in the life sciences industry to manipulate fluids in volumes as small as a nanolitre. Such miniaturization and the extremely high throughput enables overwhelming benefits, allowing thousands of experiments to be conducted in parallel while consuming extremely small quantities of expensive reagents and test samples.

These biochips are the analog of microprocessors in the semiconductor industry and have been appropriately named integrated fluidic circuits (IFCs). Whereas microprocessors provided breakthroughs in the electronics industry, integrating scores of digital functions and supporting the parallel processing of multitudes of data, IFCs can replace roomfuls of lab equipment in the life sciences industry, performing complex bioprocesses simultaneously. The company has since successfully brought to market two IFC systems, complete with instrumentation, for life-science research.

The Fluidigm-Singapore facility will assume full manufacturing by mid of 2006 for the highly complex IFC chips. The first product to be shipped from the 15,000-square-foot Singapore facility will be the Topaz Screening Chip. This is a specialized IFC biochip for protein crystallization.

Fluidigm's biochips are fabricated using patented multilayer soft lithography, an innovative technology that enables the integration of thousands of micro-mechanical components on a biochip made of an elastomeric rubber material. Each biochip is designed with sandwiched rubber layers, each of which uses photolithography processes to fabricate extremely fine features to form ultra-small valves and other fluidic flow mechanisms for the precise manipulation of biochemistries. Many of the IFC fabrication processes have commonalities with those of semiconductor manufacturing technologies, an area where Singapore has a ready pool of skilled staff and engineering capabilities. By tapping existing skills and infrastructure, Fluidigm-Singapore will establish an efficient manufacturing base for its evolving technology.

The company is developing "next generation" products that accommodate exponential increases in functionalities and corresponding decreases in feature size.

In addition to manufacturing, Fluidigm-Singapore will play a key role in process research and development, supporting the development of manufacturing and process technologies for the fabrication of these new products. The IFC technology is foreseen to have unlimited potential for diverse applications requiring mixing and metering nanoliter volumes in a massively parallel fashion.

"Given Singapore's world-class infrastructure, coupled with strong support of the government for the biomedical technology industry, I am confident we will build a first-rate facility here," said Sam Colella, Fluidigm's Chairman of the Board. "Another compelling reason for choosing Singapore to establish our first offshore manufacturing and R&D plant is the sound regulatory framework in place for intellectual property protection," he added.

For more information on Fluidigm Corp., visit www.fluidigm.com.