NuGen Technologies Opens European Sales Office
San Carlos, California – February 1, 2005 - NuGEN Technologies, Inc., a privately held company developing and commercializing the new standard for nucleic acid amplification and labeling, and MediBIC, a leading Japanese biotechnology company with pharmacogenomic and pharmaceutical consulting business units, announced a strategic partnership and sales and technical services agreement wherein MediBIC will use its expertise in genomic technology marketing to support the adoption of NuGEN’s Ovation™ family of RNA amplification systems in Asia. Concurrently, NuGEN announced the opening of their European sales office to directly service the growing number of customers who are performing gene expression analysis experiments.
“We are very excited to be expanding our business opportunities overseas”, commented Elizabeth Hutt, vice president of commercial operations for NuGEN. “Our Ovation systems for amplifying RNA targets for gene expression analysis have been well-received in North America. With these newly formed strategic alliances, it will be easier for customers in Europe and Asia to experience the advantages that the Ovation systems have over other methods. MediBIC's recognized expertise in microarray and other genomic technologies combined with their existing relationships in the Asian market will give us a strong presence in Asia. Our new European sales office, managed by TouchDown Biomarketing BV, will allow us to reach out to European scientists. We look forward to seeing strong growth in these new markets.” MediBIC has excellent technical relationships with customers in Asia and will bring awareness to NuGEN’s portfolio of RNA amplification products, which are based on their RIBO-SPIA™ technology, to thought-leading scientists throughout Asia.
“Our expertise and existing service offerings in the Asian market will give NuGEN’s products excellent visibility,” said Yasuhiro Hashimoto, M.D., president and chief executive officer of MediBIC. “The quality of Ovation kits for RNA amplification will satisfy our clients’ need for consistent RNA amplification that does not require large sample inputs. We are pleased to start this strategic relationship with NuGEN and view these products as an important component in offering a whole solution for scientists involved in genomic scale research.”
NuGEN’s European sales force will work very closely with TouchDown Biomarketing to ensure a seamless introduction of the Ovation family of RNA amplification products into Europe. TouchDown Biomarketing offers sales and marketing, technical and logistical support to life sciences companies to launch and support their products or services into the European market.
“Customers in Europe have given us excellent feedback on the Ovation systems,” noted Bas Hulshof, Ph.D., European business manager. “Scientists performing QPCR and microarray experiments are obtaining robust results while using less sample than with other systems for RNA amplification, and they are quite pleased to be able to purchase and receive support for NuGEN’s products in Europe.”
About the Ovation family of RNA amplification kits The Ovation family of RNA amplification kits has three products designed to improve target preparation for gene expression analysis experiments. All Ovation kits use NuGEN’s proprietary RIBO-SPIA technology for RNA amplification. The systems generate enough labeled cDNA for several gene expression experiments from as little as 5 ng of total RNA. The Ovation Biotin system amplifies RNA targets for use in Affymetrix GeneChip® microarray experiments. The Ovation Aminoallyl system is used with spotted cDNA and oligo microarrays, and the Ovation RNA Amplification system is used to amplify starting material for QPCR experiments.
About NuGEN Technologies Inc.
NuGEN Technologies is focused on the development and commercialization of sensitive, rapid and cost-effective amplification and detection systems for genomic and proteomic research. The company’s technologies enable the comprehensive analysis and discovery of biological mechanisms, cellular responses, and disease pathologies. NuGEN’s proprietary SPIA™ and Ribo-SPIA™ amplification and labeling system for DNA and RNA based applications, form the foundation for a wide range of methods and products used by life scientists. The Ovation™ amplification and labeling system, the company’s first commercially available product.