VENLO, The Netherlands and HAMBURG, Germany, Sept. 13, 2004 (PRIMEZONE) -- QIAGEN N.V. (Nasdaq:QGENF) (Deutsche Borse: QIA, Prime Standard) and Evotec Technologies GmbH today announced that they have signed an agreement to promote the benefits of combining QIAGEN's proprietary TOM-amidites chemistry based RNAi products with Evotec Technologies' Opera(tm) platform. By combining the results from both platforms, systems biologists can obtain high quality functional gene analysis and thereby decipher the role of genes identified by the human genome project with unknown functions.
QIAGEN is a world-leading provider of DNA and RNA stabilization, separation and purification solutions and offers a comprehensive and growing portfolio of products and technologies for biochemical sample preparation and analysis. QIAGEN's proprietary siRNA synthesis based on TOM-amidites chemistry provides highest quality and purity of RNA oligonucleotides. QIAGEN's siRNA products combined with its RNA transfection, purification and amplification technologies provide fully integrated solutions for ultra high-throughput gene silencing in the most dynamic area of today's functional genomics markets.
Evotec Technologies' Opera high content imaging platform has proven to be the ultimate uHTS imaging reader for cellular assays. The Opera platform offers high resolution confocal microscopy and ultra fast measurement. The co-promotion activities between Evotec Technologies and QIAGEN are expected to demonstrate a significant advantage of combining the companies' leading product offerings for genome-wide approaches to systematically elucidate gene function.
The two companies will develop a series of scientific application notes that describe challenging and novel applications that can be more easily accomplished using the combination of Evotec Technologies and QIAGEN products. The first application note, "Ultra high-throughput gene silencing for rapid, economical functional genomics studies" will be published by QIAGEN in the near future.
"We are very pleased that Evotec Technologies has leveraged QIAGEN RNAi products for gene silencing experiments to demonstrate an exciting new use for their high throughput biology instrumentation," said Dr. Jie Kang, QIAGEN's Vice President R&D and Head of Gene Silencing Research. "Evotec Technologies is a visionary automation and technology-leading instrumentation company. Their Opera platform is considered as one of the most sensitive and versatile high content analysis solutions. Highest resolution and ultra fast imaging are keys to exploiting the vast information RNAi experiments can provide. QIAGEN's technology and market leadership in nucleic acid products is adding substantial value to the development of effective and highly efficient solutions in this emerging and rapidly growing market."
"We are excited to extend the application portfolio of our Opera platform through this partnership with QIAGEN," said Dr. Rolf Gunther, Chief Scientific Officer at Evotec Technologies GmbH. "The combination of highest quality RNAi chemistry and robust automation will provide researchers in system biology an integrated solution to achieve important and new insight into the biomolecular network of cells. Industrialized experimental strategies increasingly replace large singular efforts in the new field of systems biology and will finally lead to the development of new therapies for diseases."
About RNAi:
RNA interference (RNAi) is a powerful discovery tool of biomedical research using siRNA segments to turn off or "silence" a specific gene to study gene expression patterns as well as the impact of specific expression profiles directly on a cell or an entire organism and their correlation to specific diseases. To obtain these results, scientists add short interfering RNA (siRNA) to the cell, which induces gene silencing as a natural defence mechanism of the cell to prevent viral infection.
About QIAGEN:
QIAGEN N.V., a Netherlands holding company with subsidiaries in Germany, the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, France, Italy, Australia, Norway, Austria, Canada and the Netherlands believes it is the world's leading provider of innovative enabling technologies and products for the separation, purification and handling of nucleic acids. QIAGEN has developed a comprehensive portfolio of more than 320 proprietary, consumable products for nucleic acid separation, purification and handling, nucleic acid amplification, as well as automated instrumentation, synthetic nucleic acid products and related services. QIAGEN's products are sold in more than 42 countries throughout the world to academic research markets and to leading pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. In addition, QIAGEN is positioning its products for sale into developing commercial markets, including DNA sequencing and genomics, nucleic acid-based molecular diagnostics, and genetic vaccination and gene therapy. QIAGEN employs approximately 1,400 people worldwide. Further information on QIAGEN can be found at www.qiagen.com.
About Evotec Technologies GmbH:
Evotec Technologies GmbH (ET) is a subsidiary of Evotec OAI AG focussed on technology development and instrumentation for life sciences laboratories. The Company provides state-of-the-art automated and miniaturised processes that result in extremely high data content and quality output by seamlessly integrating hardware, software and bioware modules. ET's current portfolio comprises its established uHTS EVOscreen(r) system and a product line of innovative bench-top instruments (Opera(tm), Clarina, Elektra), consumables and reagents. These solutions are based on its broad patent portfolio, scientific excellence -- from drug discovery to diagnostics -- and technical know-how. ET's particular strengths are in detection and analysis in molecular dimensions, liquid handling of minimal volumes and high-speed interpretation methods and software. Evotec Technologies employs 80 people, primarily at its main site in Hamburg, Germany. Offices are located in Dusseldorf, Berlin and Boston.
Certain of the statements contained in this news release may be considered forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the U.S. Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. To the extent that any of the statements contained herein relating to QIAGEN's products, markets, strategy or operating results are forward-looking, such statements are based on current expectations that involve a number of uncertainties and risks. Such uncertainties and risks include, but are not limited to, risks associated with management of growth and international operations (including the effects of currency fluctuations and risks of dependency on logistics), variability of operating results, the commercial development of the DNA sequencing, genomics and synthetic nucleic acid-related markets, nucleic acid-based molecular diagnostics market, and genetic vaccination and gene therapy markets, competition, rapid or unexpected changes in technologies, fluctuations in demand for QIAGEN's, products (including seasonal fluctuations), difficulties in successfully adapting QIAGEN's products to integrated solutions and producing such products, the ability of QIAGEN to identify and develop new products and to differentiate its products from competitors, and the integration of acquisitions of technologies and businesses. For further information, refer to the discussion in reports that QIAGEN has filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).