>>VENLO, Netherlands, Oct. 10 /PRNewswire/ -- QIAGEN N.V. (Nasdaq: QGENF, Neuer Markt: QIA; Easdaq: QGEN) and KREATECH Biotechnology B.V. today announced the signing of a marketing and distribution agreement. Under the terms of the agreements, QIAGEN was granted an exclusive license to KREATECH's ULS® labeling technologies and products in combination with QIAGEN's resonance light scattering (``RLS'') products licensed from Genicon Biosciences. In addition, QIAGEN acquired non-exclusive rights to develop and sell ULS® products for labeling and detecting nucleic acids as well as proteins in microarray applications for the life science research markets.
QIAGEN intends to leverage its focused research and development strength as well as its worldwide sales and distribution network to further develop as well as manufacture and market ULS® products for the labeling and detection of nucleic acids or proteins in applications such as microarray analyses. The KREATECH labeling products will be bundled and marketed with QIAGEN's leading nucleic acid sample separation and purification products as well as with QIAGEN's biomolecule detection technologies, thereby creating optimized and integrated solutions for such analyses. Financial terms were not disclosed.
KREATECH's unique and proprietary ULS® (Universal Linkage System) labeling technology allows the attachment of detectable tags such as Genicon's RLS particles or fluorescent tags to purified nucleic acids and thereby addresses a critical step required in most nucleic acids analysis technologies. The labeling of a nucleic acid is typically performed subsequent to its isolation and purification. Therefore, the optimized integration and bundling of labeling technologies with nucleic acid handling, isolation, separation and purification technologies can create significant advantages in performance and ease of use for downstream analyses of such purified and labeled nucleic acids.
``We are excited about the benefits that the combination of KREATECH's exciting labeling technologies with QIAGEN's nucleic acid handling, separation and purification technologies can bring to our customers,'' said Dr. Ulrich Schriek, QIAGEN's Vice President for Corporate Business Development. ``The market and technology strength that results from these agreements has the power to make ULS® the technology of choice for labeling, purifying and detecting biological samples on microarrays,'' Dr. Ulrich Schriek continued. ``QIAGEN and KREATECH also intend to develop new applications and customer specific solutions with our combined technologies. In addition we intend to leverage the ULS® technology's benefits for applications where detection technologies marketed by QIAGEN are applied, such as the Zeptosens, the Genicon and the Luminex systems.''
``We are very pleased to have entered into this collaboration with QIAGEN which upon launch of the products immediately extends the availability of the ULS® technology to life science researchers throughout the world,' said Alexander Altlink, KREATECH's CEO. ''QIAGEN is a focused and dynamic company with an excellent technology and market position and expertise which can significantly leverage our ULS® technology.. We believe that our new partnership with QIAGEN will put KREATECH on the fast track for taking advantage of the rapidly growing market for this unique and new technology.``<<
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Cheers, Tuck |
