User:Ceyockey/sandbox ACEA Biosciences article prep

Article preparation
ACEA Biosciences is a small (<500 employees) American biological assay development company based in San Diego, California. The company marketed the first high throughput instrument for label-free, electrical impedance based cellular assays under the brand "Cellkey".

ACEA exploits a technology called "label-free electrical impedance detection", which was initially described in 1984.

One source of revenue for ACEA has been government grants. In 2013, the company received a small, short term grant (US$80,000 over 6 months) from the USEPA to "develop cell lines, protocols and data analysis methods to assess the toxic effects of environmental pollutants."

, the company's chief executive officer was James O'Connell. , the company's chief technology officer was Xiaobo Wang. For at least the period between March 2011 and November 2014, the Vice President and Senior Director for Research and Development was Yama Abassi.

Agilent acquired ACEA Biosciences in November 2018 for US$250 million.

Products
One of company's products is the "xCELLigence plate reader", a device which can be used to monitor the movement patterns of small organisms (such as hookworms) and coverage or movement properties of adherent cultured cells in response to administered drugs or other chemicals, such as toxins. A version of the reader has been specialized to assess the beating pattern of cardiac muscle cells in culture, the "RTCA cardio" device. A related product, "RT-CES", has been used to "monitor cell growth in real time", the associated growth substrate referred to as an "E-plate".

The company's xCELLigence product was co-developed with and marketed globally through a partnership with Roche Applied Science. ACEA also engaged Vivo Biosciences to develop assays for the xCELLigence system incorporating Vivo's proprietary HuBiogel technology. Roche Applied Science owns the trademark on the product's name, though the underlying intellectual property is owned by ACEA.

Competitors
As of 2010, and restricting to just those companies which develop assay devices measuring electrical impedance as a function of cell-surface contact, ACEA has two competitors: Applied BioPhysics and MDS Analytical Technologies. By 2011 the competitor number had increased to include Corning Biosciences, Bionas and ibidi GmbH.