Astra Canyon Group, 6021 E Grant Rd, Tucson, AZ 85712, US

Accelr8 Technology Corporation is a developer of innovative materials and instrumentation for advanced applications in medical instrumentation, basic research and drug discovery. The company s initial products were OptArray micro-arraying slides, coated with its OptiChem surface chemistry. Its OptArray slides are used for protein and DNA arraying. In addition to its micro-arraying products, Accelr8 is developing a rapid clinical pathogen platform, the BACcelr8r, based on its innovative surface coatings, assay processing and detection technologies. The company is engineering BACcelr8r to become the world's first diagnostic system to provide bacterial identification and quantitation in two hours or less. It will also offer complete antibiotic resistance strain identification in eight hours or less, as opposed to the one to three days it takes for standard culturing. Accelr8 entered the life sciences industry in 2001 with the acquisition of advanced materials and instrumentation platforms for bio-analytic assays. Prior to the acquisition, Accelr8 had been successful in the software industry since 1987.