Affymetrix' GeneChip® technology was invented
in the late 1980's by a team of scientists lead 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.
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.
