Roche NimbleGen and Affymetrix Expand Licensing Agreement

Roche NimbleGen Inc., a company of Roche Applied Science, and Affymetrix Inc. announced that they have expanded the terms of the license to a number of Affymetrix patents originally granted in October 2006. The expanded license now provides certain diagnostic rights for array-based DNA copy number analysis and array-based re-sequencing in addition to covering the manufacture, use and sale of nucleic acid microarrays and related products and services in the research field. Financial details of the expanded license were not disclosed.

Roche NimbleGen is a leading innovator, manufacturer and supplier of a proprietary suite of DNA microarrays, consumables, instruments and services. Roche NimbleGen uniquely produces high-density arrays of long oligo probes that provide greater information content and higher data quality necessary for studying the full diversity of genomic and epigenomic variation. The improved performance is made possible by Roche NimbleGen’s proprietary Maskless Array Synthesis (MAS) technology, which uses digital light processing and rapid, high-yield photochemistry to synthesize long oligo, high-density DNA microarrays with extreme flexibility.