Agencourt Bioscience Enters Into Supply Agreement with Affymetrix

Agencourt Bioscience Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Beckman Coulter has announced the signing of a distribution and supply agreement with Affymetrix Inc.

Agencourt will provide a nucleic acid purification product, Agencourt RNAClean, to be included in the reagent kit for Affymetrix' GeneChip^® Array Station.

Agencourt RNAClean is designed to provide a reproducible method for preparing quality nucleic acids for use in applications such as microarray analysis.

Agencourt RNAClean enables the researcher to use one product to complete both cDNA and cRNA purification steps.

Affymetrix will incorporate the SPRI magnetic bead technology into the automated GeneChip Array Station reagent product offering.

"We are pleased that Affymetrix has selected our product for cDNA and cRNA cleanup in support of their GeneChip Array Station," stated Lynn Doucette- Stamm, Ph.D., Agencourt's vice president business development.

"Beta site testing of this product for use with systems installed by Affymetrix has been outstanding, and we look forward to continued growth of the product line."

"The integration of the SPRI technology and specifically the Agencourt RNAClean product allows us to provide our customers with an optimal automated target preparation solution for their GeneChip microarray experiments," said Alan Dance, senior vice president of business development at Affymetrix.

"By improving data consistency and decreasing the hands-on time needed to perform experiments, the Affymetrix Array Station enables scientists to accelerate discovery, publication, and bring new tests and therapies to market more quickly."