Leading research peptide manufacturer, Cambridge Research Biochemicals (CRB) announced today that it has signed a non-exclusive license with LI-COR Biosciences (LI-COR) to develop, manufacture and sell IRDye® and IRDye® QC-1 near-infrared dye-labelled peptides for research use only.

CRB is a world leader in providing dye labelled products to researchers. The partnership with LI-COR will enable the company to provide dye labelled peptides, which are unique in the field of fluorescence imaging applications.

LI-COR has been developing high-quality near-infrared technology for the life science research community for more than twenty years.  LI-COR products support many applications, including quantitative Western blot detection, In-Cell WesternT assays, EMSAs, FLISA, protein assays, florescence microscopy, tissue sections and in-vivo imaging.

By partnering both companies are now able to combine their knowledge and expertise in the dye labelled market to offer customers access to the best choice of dye labelled peptides for research purposes.

"We always look to provide the best variety of available dyes to customers who have need to expand their choices as research techniques become more sophisticated," comments Emily Humphrys, CRB's Commercial Director. "In-vivo fluorescence imaging, for example, requires using the long wavelength dyes which LI-COR provide, this partnership will keep CRB at the forefront of the dye labelled market."

"We are very excited that Cambridge Research Biochemicals now offers our IRDye® near-infrared dye technologies", states Bambi Reynolds, Licensing and Intellectual Property Manager, Biotechnology at Li-COR "The expertise and quality for custom peptide synthesis from CRB, coupled with LI-COR® dye technologies, will enable our customers to create innovative solutions for their research needs."

To ensure they have the largest selection of dyes available for peptide labelling, CRB has signed a number of similar licenses with other dye manufacturers including Life Technologies, GE-Healthcare, Atto-Tec, Cyanagen and Biosearch Technologies.

Dyes now available through this and other licensing deals include:

• Life Technologies - Alexa Fluor®, Bodipy®, Oregon Green®
• LI-COR - IRDye® and QC-1 near infrared dye labelled peptides
• GE Healthcare - CyDyesT
• Atto-Tec - ATTO dyes
• Cyanagen - Chromis dyes
• Biosearch Technologies - Cal Fluor®, Quasar®

To help the customers identify the most suitable dye to suit their research needs, CRB has developed a Dye Selector. By choosing the desired wavelength the Dye Selector automatically provides a list of suitable dyes and the necessary technical data to enable customers to select the optimum dye for their application.


About Cambridge Research Biochemicals (CRB)
CRB was established in 1980. Its core business is the chemical synthesis of peptides and the custom production of polyclonal antibodies. The company has a global market-base drawing customers from both public and private research sectors including pharmaceutical, academia and biotech. All of the company's products are for research purposes only and are used as custom reagents for proof of principle studies within early phase drug discovery and to support biomarker programmes in clinical studies. It is the second oldest peptide company in the world and has been making specific tailor-made antibodies since its inception. In recent years, Cambridge Research Biochemicals has formed strategic alliances with GE Healthcare, Life Technologies (Molecular Probes) and Quotient Bioresearch to extend its labelling offering.