Company Profile
Past
DNASTAR was founded by University of Wisconsin Professor of Genetics Frederick Blattner and his student colleague John Schroeder in the early 1980s. DNASTAR was among the early pioneers in bioinformatics. As personal computing was coming on the scene, Fred and John saw an opportunity to provide turnkey solutions to geneticists and other molecular biologists when working with DNA and protein sequences. DNASTAR's mission then was the same as it is today: to provide life scientists with the tools they need to efficiently and effectively accomplish their research objectives. For a major portion of our history, we have done this through the development and sale of Lasergene, our premier suite of software tools for sequence assembly, editing, alignment and analysis.
In the early years, the product was written for the CPM operating system. When the IBM personal computer appeared, a DOS version of our software soon followed. With the advent of Compact Discs, DNASTAR was the first to offer the GenBank database on CD; hence the name "Lasergene". Next came the Apple Macintosh® computers and the introduction of a Graphical User Interface for DNASTAR's product line. A few years later the Microsoft Windows® version of our product was released and, for more than 10 years, Lasergene has remained the only comprehensive sequence analysis software package available on both the Macintosh® and Windows® operating systems. With our latest versions of Lasergene providing users the ability to work with both Sanger and 454™ Next Generation sequencing technologies, the Company has established itself as the pioneer software company in the Next Generation sequencing market.
Since 2000, we have expanded our product offering to include GenVision, a powerful data visualization tool. In 2005, we introduced our first microarray gene expression product, ArrayStar. In June of 2007 a new version of ArrayStar was released that significantly increases the gene expression analysis Features available to users.
Present
DNASTAR products are used by researchers in more than 65 countries and in every state in the United States. Our products are used by scientists in every major pharmaceutical company, the top biotech companies and most major research academic institutes. It is not an overstatement to say that anywhere significant amounts of molecular biology research are occurring, it is likely that DNASTAR products are nearby.
We remain committed to continued development of our scientific software products. Fully half of our employees are involved in research and development activities related to current and future products. We continually strive to understand the current and emerging needs of researchers and try to meet those needs with useful, cutting edge products.
DNASTAR also has award winning customer service and technical support. We are committed to supporting customers in all aspects of their relationship with us. You can always get help from someone in our headquarters in Madison, Wisconsin, USA or from our strong global distribution network, which includes sales and technical support by our Distributors in Europe, Asia and around the world.
There is more to being a scientific leader than just providing great software to researchers and DNASTAR is committed to nurturing the scientific enterprise in other ways, including our Rising Star small college grant program and our free educational software program. Both of these programs are aimed at providing affordable tools to nascent life scientists who may not be getting their education at research centered universities.
Future
We want to build on our past leadership in the bioinformatics field by continuing to recognize the advanced needs of today's research scientists. We continue to develop and enhance our current products, keeping them up to date with current desktop operating systems and enhancing their functionality based on customer feedback and emerging scientific needs. We are also embarking on new efforts to expand our reach in new bioinformatics technology areas.
We are inspired to know that our software is used to address some of the most challenging and important problems in medicine, agriculture and the environment. We admire the extraordinary efforts that life scientists invest in their work, and we are driven as much by that commitment and success as by our own. Our future is based on making sure our efforts continue to be worthy of life scientists' support.
We thank you for your past support and we encourage your comments and suggestions.
Sincerely,
Frederick R. Blattner |
Thomas E. Schwei |