Roche Diagnostics and Caliper Life Sciences Offer Integrated High-Throughput Solution with the LightCycler® 480 Instrument


Integrated Product Offering Doubles Throughput Capacity

INDIANAPOLIS, Jan. 26 -- Roche Diagnostics and Caliper Life Sciences, Inc. today announced a joint product offering that combines Caliper's Twister® II Microplate Handler and Roche's LightCycler® 480 Real-Time PCR system. The integrated product offering provides customers with a cost-effective and fully-scaleable solution for laboratories to complete high-throughput screening with increased automation capability and walk-away time. The two companies have also agreed to co-market and promote the joint solution into the life science research market.

"We continuously strive to provide our customers with proven technology that simplifies processes within the lab without compromising accuracy and precision," said Manfred Baier, Head of Roche Applied Science, a business area of Roche Diagnostics. "Caliper's Twister II is the industry standard for plate and tip loading. Our customers have confidence in this technology so it was a natural fit to work with Caliper to offer an integrated solution."

The Twister II is a plug-and-play bench-top plate handler with a walk-away capacity to stack and load up to 200 standard microplates. When integrated with Roche's LightCycler® 480 system, a multiwell, plate-based real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) analysis platform, the system doubles the throughput screening capacity for highly accurate detection of nucleic acids and genotyping. Caliper's iLink Pro automation software provides the built-in adapter necessary to attach multiple LightCycler® 480 instruments to the Twister II for throughput screening in real-time PCR analysis. Together, the Twister II and LightCycler® 480 instrument eliminate the need for frequent manual re-loading. The solution is a viable investment that evolves with the needs of the lab to ensure maximum productivity.

"Researchers are constantly faced with improving workflow and automating tasks while maximizing the benefit gained by implementing technologies in the lab," said Jean-Louis Rufener, Vice President, Worldwide Marketing and Sales, Caliper Life Sciences. "We teamed with Roche to meet this challenge and provide laboratories with proven technologies, from industry leaders, at competitive prices."

The integrated Twister II and LightCycler® 480 Instrument is available from both Caliper Life Sciences and Roche Diagnostics. For more information visit www.roche-applied-science.com/lightcycler480 or www.caliperLS.com.

About Roche and the Roche Diagnostics Division

Headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, Roche is one of the world's leading research-focused healthcare groups in the fields of pharmaceuticals and diagnostics. As a supplier of innovative products and services for the early detection, prevention, diagnosis and treatment of disease, the group contributes on a broad range of fronts to improving people's health and quality of life. Roche is a world leader in diagnostics, the leading supplier of medicines for cancer and transplantation and a market leader in virology. Roche employs roughly 70,000 people in 150 countries and has R&D agreements and strategic alliances with numerous partners, including majority ownership interests in Genentech and Chugai. Roche's Diagnostics Division offers a uniquely broad product portfolio and supplies a wide array of innovative testing products and services to researchers, physicians, patients, hospitals and laboratories world-wide. For further information, please visit our website www.roche.com.

About Caliper Life Sciences

Caliper Life Sciences is a leading provider of drug discovery and life sciences research solutions for the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. With its recent acquisitions of NovaScreen Biosciences and Xenogen Corp., Caliper has positioned itself to transform drug discovery and development through a keen focus on clinically relevant experimentation. Caliper's products and services, assembled from a leading portfolio of microfluidics, liquid handling, and imaging technologies, span in vitro and in vivo experimentation and address key issues on the critical path of drug discovery and development. More information about Caliper can be found at www.caliperLS.com.

For further information please contact:
Doyia Turner
Roche Diagnostics Corporation
317-521-7252
doyia.turner@roche.com

Stacey Holifield
Caliper Life Sciences
Schwartz Communications
781-684-0770
caliper@schwartz-pr.com

Source: Roche Diagnostics

Web site: www.roche.com/
http://www.roche-applied-science.com/lightcycler480
http://www.caliperls.com/

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