Affymetrix'
GeneChip® technology was invented in the late 1980's by a team
of scientists led by Stephen P.A. Fodor, Ph.D. The theory behind
their work was revolutionary - a notion that semiconductor manufacturing
techniques could be united with advances in combinatorial chemistry
to build vast amounts of biological data on a small glass chip. This
technology became the basis of a new company, Affymetrix, formed as
a division of Affymax, N.V. in 1991. Affymetrix began operating independently
in 1992.
Circa 1989 - The world's
first microarray prototype built using a microscope slide.
Affymetrix
has headquarters in Santa Clara, California with offices worldwide.
Today, these arrays are considered the gold standard tool for analyzing
complex genetic information and are used by hundreds of pharmaceutical,
biotechnology, agrichemical, diagnostics and consumer products companies
as well as academic, government and other non-profit research institutes
to analyze the relationship between genes and human health.
