Veeco and Leica Microsystems Announce Life Science Collaboration

Veeco Instruments Inc., a leading provider of instrumentation to the nanoscience community, and Leica Microsystems GmbH, a leading designer and manufacturer of optical microscopy imaging systems, have finalized a collaboration to drive research in biological and nano-medicine communities.

The initial phase of the collaboration focuses on the integration of Veeco’s BioScope™ II atomic force microscope (AFM) with Leica’s DMI series of inverted microscopes. The alliance will yield high-resolution images for cell biology, enabling researchers to uncover positive ways to impact human disease and treatment. Veeco and Leica Microsystems will debut their collaboration at the AFM BioMed conference in Barcelona, Spain, April 19-21 with a common marketing campaign.

“Veeco’s work with Leica Microsystems provides a powerful opportunity to move the bioscience community forward,” commented Francis Steenbeke, Vice President, Life Science, for Veeco. “Now researchers from all specialties can integrate AFM technology with optical fluorescence and confocal microscopy. This first step will greatly improve the future of research in the bioscience community. This collaboration with Leica Microsystems is the latest in a series of actions Veeco is taking to expand our commitment to the life science research community, which has included strengthening our life science engineering and applications support and partnering with global life science industry experts who can help guide us in our product development process.”

The innovative, high-performance BioScope II AFM has been engineered specifically to facilitate advanced bioscience. The revolutionary design of the BioScope II enables novel in-situ techniques for measuring biological samples in three dimensions and, when integrated with Leica’s DMI series of inverted optical or, at a later step, confocal microscopes, will give the live cell researcher an intelligent, fully-automated and coded instrument.

“With its leading technologies in high resolution confocal microscopy and its broad range of application driven solutions in fluorescence light microscopy, Leica Microsystems provides an excellent basis for further expansions and combinations of optical microscopy and AFM technologies,” added Martin Haase, General Manager of Leica’s Life Science Research Division. “This kind of collaboration underlines Leica’s strategy to further extend its innovative product offering by open innovation projects.”

Together, the pair is ideal for a wide array of cutting-edge bioscience applications, such as spatial
identification of protein molecules and cellular structures, investigations of cell response to mechanical stimulation and nano-manipulation, and in-situ pharmacological studies of live cells. By being able to mechanically probe and manipulate cellular samples without complicated preparation, biologists can have a unique view into cell functionality and are able to conduct experiments, which were impossible with traditional microscopy techniques.