Complementary technologies to produce a new biochip format
FOSTER CITY and SAN DIEGO, Calif. - November 9, 1999: PE Biosystems (NYSE:PEB), a PE Corporation business, and Illumina, Inc., announced today a strategic collaboration to develop, manufacture and market array-based systems for high-throughput DNA analysis. Under the agreement, the companies will jointly develop systems based on Illumina's BeadArray' technology and PE Biosystems' proprietary DNA chemistry.
As part of the agreement, PE Biosystems has purchased $5M of equity in Illumina and will provide a portion of the research and development funding for the collaboration.
"The Illumina BeadArray' technology provides substantial levels of throughput for the detection of DNA sequences," said Michael W. Hunkapiller, Ph.D., senior vice president of PE Corporation and president of PE Biosystems. "The collaboration will integrate PE Biosystems' core strengths in assay chemistry and instrumentation systems with Illumina's novel BeadArray' approach to produce a new biochip format. The collaboration is expected to provide researchers with new tools to significantly improve their productivity for analysis of SNP (Single Nucleotide Polymorphism) genotypes at lower cost and with superior performance."
Each person has a unique combination of SNP genotypes, which underlie differences in their susceptibility to diseases and response to treatment. Common SNPs number in the millions. The rapid, large-scale analysis of SNP genotypes is expected to accelerate the understanding, diagnosis and treatment of disease.
PE Biosystems will receive exclusive worldwide rights to market the collaboration systems using its proprietary ZipCode' chemistries. These chemistries provide a high level of flexibility by permitting the investigator to analyze different sets of sequences on a common "universal" array. By using ZipCode' chemistry, nucleic acid sequences can be detected with high specificity. "After evaluating several other DNA array technologies for SNP genotyping, we concluded that the BeadArray' technology has advantages in scalability and throughput, and provides for small to large numbers of assays per sample," said Dr. Hunkapiller. Illumina's Array of Arrays' also allows the investigator to process many samples in parallel.
"We are extremely pleased to bring our innovative technology to market with PE Biosystems' proprietary chemistries," said Jay Flatley, president and chief executive officer of Illumina. "PE Biosystems' market leadership in genetic analysis, proven technology and worldwide distribution will improve our ability to address the growing market demand for high-throughput SNP analysis," he added. SNP analysis will be one of the first applications of the collaboration.
PE Corporation currently comprises two operating groups. The PE Biosystems Group (NYSE: PEB), with sales of $1.2 billion during fiscal 1999, develops and markets instrument-based systems, reagents, software and contract-related services to the life science industry and research community. PE Biosystems is headquartered in Foster City, Calif., and comprises four divisions: Applied Biosystems, PE Informatics, PerSeptive Biosystems and Tropix. Celera Genomics Group (NYSE: CRA), headquartered in Rockville, Md., intends to become the definitive source of genomic and related medical information. Information about the company is available on the worldwide web at www.pe-corp.com or by phoning 800.762.6923.
Illumina, Inc. was founded in 1998 to develop novel information-dense biological and chemical sensing systems to meet the needs of a range of emerging markets. At the heart of Illumina, Inc.'s technology is the BeadArray', a randomly ordered self-assembled array of bead-based sensors. Illumina can pack tens of thousands of individual sensors into a square millimeter at the end of an optical fiber bundle. Initially, Illumina, Inc. is targeting the information-intensive field of genetic variation analysis, an area of research that is being accelerated by the successes of the Human Genome Project. In addition, Illumina is developing its optical bead-based technology for the detection and analysis of chemicals and complex mixtures. Information about Illumina is available on the worldwide web at www.illumina.com or by phoning 858.587.4290.
Certain statements in this press release are forward-looking. These may be identified by the use of forward-looking words or phrases such as "believe," "expect," "intend," "anticipate," "should," "planned," "estimated," and "potential," among others. These forward-looking statements are based on PE Corporation's current expectations. The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 provides a "safe harbor" for such forward-looking statements. In order to comply with the terms of the safe harbor, PE Corporation notes that a variety of factors could cause actual results and experience to differ materially from the anticipated results or other expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements. The risks and uncertainties that may affect the operations, performance, development, and results of PE Biosystems businesses include but are not limited to (1) rapidly changing technology and dependence on new products; (2) sales dependent on customers' capital spending policies and government-sponsored research; (3) claims for patent infringement; (4) significant overseas operations; (5) future growth strategy; (6) uncertainty of success of Year 2000 compliance plan; (7) earthquakes; and (8) other factors that might be described from time to time in PE Corporation's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
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The names BeadArray' and Array of Arrays' are trademarks of Illumina, Inc. The name ZipCodes' is a trademark of PE Biosystems.
Contact: Illumina, Jay Flatley, President & CEO, 858-587-4290 x251 or jflatley@illumina.com. PE Corporation Linda Thomas (650) 554-2647 or Edward Bloch (203) 761-5248.