Nanopoint began life as a spin-off from Oceanit Laboratories, a
diversified science and engineering firm that counts among its
inventions a test kit for ciguatera poisoning in fish and a nano
surfboard. Cathy Owen, a Silicon Valley veteran, joined the
founders of Nanopoint in 2004 as president to develop an
ultrahigh resolution imaging system and commercialize a device
the size of a microscope slide with microfluidic channels for
growing and analyzing live cells. When technology invented at
Oceanit shows market potential, a new company is spun off to
commercialize it. In 2006, Nanopoint introduced cellTRAY, a
live-cell biochip that contains thousands of etched wells and
microfluidic channels. The chip, the size of a standard
microscope slide, is fluidically closed, yet mechanically open,
to allow live cells to be treated, manipulated, and viewed under
a microscope. In June, Nanopoint launched the cellTRAY imaging
system, model CT-2000. This product allows experiments to run on
an inverted microscope for sever