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News & Events - Dr. Schena Press Release

ArrayIt® Division Celebrates the 10th Anniversary of Dr. Schena’s 95’ Science Paper.

Sunnyvale, CA, October 20, 2005 – On October 20th, the ArrayIt® Life Sciences Division of TeleChem International, Inc. celebrated the 10th anniversary of Dr. Schena’s groundbreaking publication in Science magazine (Schena et al., Science 270, 467-470, October 20, 1995). The 95’ Science paper, bearing the title “Quantitative Monitoring of Gene Expression Patterns with a Complementary DNA Microarray”, is the first paper ever published on microarray technology, and the company held a champagne toast to celebrate the tenth-year anniversary of Dr. Schena’s landmark achievement. Dr. Schena has served as a consultant to the ArrayIt® Division since 1997 and currently holds the position of Visiting Scholar at the company. Ten years ago today, Dr. Schena and his colleagues at Stanford University published a paper (see figure 1) that employed contact printing to manufacture cDNA microarrays representing 45 genes from the small mustard plant known as Arabidopsis thaliana. Arabidopsis is a widely used model organism for laboratory studies owing to its fast generation time, small genome, and facile genetics. The Stanford team used a two-color mRNA labeling and hybridization scheme, together with fluorescence scanning, to measure Arabidopsis gene expression across the 45-gene set in transgenic plant lines and tissues (see figure 2). More than 15,000 scientific publications have emanated from Dr. Schena’s 1995 Science paper. In addition, Dr. Schena’s 95’ Science paper has served as the template on which the billion-dollar microarray industry is built.

Following the champagne celebration, Dr. Schena shared his views on the 10th anniversary milestone. “As a teenager, I would read the popular literature for stories and accounts of biochemistry, with the dream of someday making an important contribution to the field. I feel very fortunate, some years later, to have realized that dream. So many circumstances aligned properly to allow that to happen – strong family, close friends, the world’s best academic institutions, incomparable mentors, and a robust family business, among so many others. In science, you have to be smart and work hard, but you also have to be lucky. I have been a very lucky scientist.”

Figures 1 and 2. Cover of the October 20th, 1995 issue of Science magazine that contains Dr. Schena’s Science paper (left). Main data figure in the 95’ Science paper, showing the first published microarrays (right).

About TeleChem International, Inc.
TeleChem is a privately owned company with products and services provided by three corporate divisions: Life Sciences (ArrayIt®), Chemicals, and Diagnostics (NGS-ArrayIt, Inc.). The Life Sciences division offers a complete line of products and services for the microarray industry, a high-technology sector that uses tiny glass “chips” to decipher the human genome. TeleChem’s patented microarray manufacturing technology (U.S. 6,101,946) and supporting products are used in more than 10,000 company and university laboratories worldwide. The Chemicals division provides import and export services and government contract manufacturing in the area of industrial chemicals for plastics, fire control, water treatment, agriculture, and industrial and institutional compounding. The Diagnostics Division (NGS-ArrayIt, Inc.) has recently received a landmark patent (U.S. 6,913,879) from the United States Patent Office for its revolutionary “multi-patient” genotyping technology, which allows as many as 100,000 patients to be tested on a single microarray. NGS-ArrayIt plans to begin offering its patented genotyping and disease diagnostics methods to current and new users in the form of testing kits, services and technology transfer licenses.

Media Contact
Paul Haje
Director of Public Relations
408-744-1331
Email: paul@ArrayIt.com