Bruker BioSciences Corp. (BRKR)

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Instrument makers harness technology to pursue budding applications for their tools

August 13, 2007 Volume 85, Number 33 pp. 26-31

Marc S. Reisch - Chemical & Engineering News

SCIENTIFIC INSTRUMENT MAKERS are on a mission to take their instruments out of the lab and put them into everyone's hands. They want to make their mass spectrometers, infrared spectrophotometers, and ion detectors ubiquitous. In a world that fears terrorists, contaminated food, and airborne pollutants, instrument companies are working to design simple-to-operate, portable, affordable devices to identify threats or ensure safety.

"If God made it, we can test for it," says Richard F. Begley, president of analytical sciences at PerkinElmer. "A day will come when people will want to know the details of what is in the water they drink, the air they breathe, and the food they eat."

Ten years from now, Begley predicts, people will notice more instruments in use out of the lab and in the field. Further into the future, "everybody will be able to buy a 'Star Trek' tricorder," he says, referring to the scanning tool used to analyze unfamiliar environments in the science-fiction television series. Many people already have glucose- and heart-monitoring equipment in their homes, Begley points out.

A maker of some of the most sophisticated scientific instruments, PerkinElmer designs and sells items such as high-throughput flash luminescent analyzers that are used by pharmaceutical laboratories to screen for potential new drugs. And although Begley might seem the wide-eyed dreamer when he suggests that complex, sophisticated devices can be "dumbed down," other executives at scientific instrument firms see eye to eye with him.

In fact, for some instrument makers, the future is already here. Cynthia Cai, petrochemical and chemical industry manager at instrument maker Agilent, says her firm strives to design simple, rugged, and portable instruments. Recent terrorism concerns, along with technical advances, have prompted the design of portable equipment rugged enough to be parachuted into war zones for chemical weapons testing, she points out.

Another company, Bruker Daltonics NBC Detection, also has chemical weapons on its corporate mind. Civil emergency response teams are getting the firm's handheld ion detection units, which will allow them to quickly determine if any suspected chemical warfare agents are present at the site of a terrorist attack, says Frank Thibodeau, vice president of Bruker.

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http://pubs.acs.org/cen/business/85/8533bus1.html