Bio-Rad and NuProbe Enter into an Exclusive Licensing Agreement for Digital PCR Applications
HERCULES, Calif. and Houston, Texas— November 4, 2022 — Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc. (NYSE: BIO and BIOb), a global leader in life science research and clinical diagnostic products, and NuProbe USA, a genomics and molecular diagnostics company, today announced the signing of a licensing and product development agreement. Under the terms of the agreement, NuProbe USA will exclusively license its allele enrichment technologies to Bio-Rad for the development of multiplexed digital PCR assays. This technology will help to advance Bio-Rad’s menu of products in oncology, where highly sensitive and multiplexed mutation detection assays aid translational research, therapy selection, and disease monitoring.
“Bio-Rad provides the leading solution for digital PCR, and we are committed to providing oncology researchers with technologies that enable everything from biomarker discovery to clinical trials and patient monitoring of minimal residual disease,” said Simon May, EVP and President of Life Sciences at Bio-Rad Laboratories. “We look forward to working with NuProbe USA to develop the next generation of highly multiplexed digital PCR assays as part of our expanding oncology offering.”
“NuProbe’s innovations enable greatly elevated sensitivity for DNA biomarker detection across a variety of platforms,” said Yingshuang Chai, Co-Founder and CEO of NuProbe Global, the parent organization of NuProbe USA. “The excellent quantitation abilities of Bio-Rad’s digital PCR platforms are a great fit for NuProbe’s allele enrichment technologies.”
“We are excited to work with Bio-Rad in applying our blocker displacement amplification technology to Droplet Digital PCR,” said David Zhang, Co-Founder and CEO of NuProbe USA. “We remain committed to sustained innovation driving new molecular technologies, and to securing partnerships with industry leaders to broaden the reach and impact of these technologies.”
NuProbe USA has developed and optimized the Blocker Displacement Amplification (BDA) technology as a PCR method in which variant DNA alleles are enriched over 1000-fold over wild-type alleles. The BDA technology has been featured in scientific publications and journals including Nature Biomedical Engineering and Nature Communications, and BDA has been experimentally validated on hundreds of clinical samples across multiple platforms including quantitative PCR, digital PCR, Sanger sequencing, sequencing-by-synthesis (NGS), and nanopore sequencing.
Bio-Rad is a market leader in digital PCR and provides complete solutions to the research and diagnostics communities, including instrumentation, software, reagents, and the most expansive menu of digital PCR assays on the market for applications spanning translational research, cell and gene therapy, and environmental monitoring. Droplet Digital PCR has been cited in over 6300 publications including more than 800 clinical research citations.
About Bio-Rad
Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc. (NYSE: BIO and BIOb) is a global leader in developing, manufacturing, and marketing a broad range of innovative products for the life science research and clinical diagnostic markets. With 70 years of focus on quality and customer service, our products advance the scientific discovery process and improve healthcare. Our customers are universities, research institutions, hospitals, biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, as well as public health and commercial laboratories including food safety and environmental quality testing facilities. Based in Hercules, California, Bio-Rad has a global network of operations with approximately 8,200 employees worldwide and $2.9 billion in revenues in 2021. For more information, please visit bio-rad.com.
About NuProbe
NuProbe is a cutting-edge genomics and molecular diagnostics company with revolutionary molecular diagnostic technologies to improve the sensitivity of sequencing mutations and copy number variations by over 10-fold. NuProbe has sites in Houston, USA, Shanghai, China, and Suzhou, China. NuProbe’s vision is to offer affordable, timely, and accurate disease state information to enable precision medicine and improve patient outcomes.
NuProbe’s products and services are for Research Use Only and are not intended for In Vitro Diagnostic use.
Bio-Rad Forward-Looking Statements
This release may be deemed to contain certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements include, without limitation, statements we make regarding our expectations about developing and launching products, and working with NuProbe USA to develop the next generation of highly multiplexed digital PCR assays as part of our expanding oncology offering. Forward-looking statements generally can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as “plan”, “believe,” “expect,” “anticipate,” “may,” “will,” “intend,” “estimate,” “continue,” or similar expressions or the negative of those terms or expressions, although not all forward-looking statements contain these words. Such statements involve risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to vary materially from those expressed in or indicated by the forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include the duration and severity of the COVID-19 pandemic, supply chain risks, our ability to develop and market new or improved products, our ability to compete effectively, international legal and regulatory risks, and product quality and liability issues. For further information regarding our risks and uncertainties, please refer to the “Risk Factors” and “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operation” in Bio-Rad’s public reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and our Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q. Bio-Rad cautions you not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, which reflect an analysis only and speak only as of the date hereof. We disclaim any obligation to update these forward-looking statements.
Bio-Rad Media Contact:
Anna Gralinska
510-741-6643
[email protected]
NuProbe USA Media Contact:
Rachel Reed
715-240-0797
[email protected]
