Qiagen and Agilent Technologies to co-market lab-on-a-chip solutions

Venlo, Netherlands and Palo Alto, CA March 27, 2003 Qiagen and Agilent Technologies today announced that they have signed an agreement to co-market the Agilent 2100 bioanalyzer and LabChip kits with Qiagen’s consumables and instruments for the separation, purification and handling of nucleic acids and proteins.

The combined solutions incorporating Qiagen’s and Agilent’s products are intended to enable molecular biologists and biochemists to obtain the highest quality results in the analysis of biomolecules such as DNA, RNA, proteins and cells.

Qiagen is a provider of DNA and RNA stabilization, separation and purification solutions, and develops products and technologies for biochemical sample preparation and analysis. The Agilent 2100 bioanalyzer and LabChip kits, jointly developed with Caliper Technologies, have created a microfluidics-based system for analyzing RNA, DNA, proteins and cell fluorescence.

The LabChip kits measure both sample quality and quantity in a single step. The co-marketing activities between Agilent and Qiagen will enable customers to take full advantage of the companies’ product offerings for the preparation and analysis of nucleic acid, protein and cell samples.

As part of the non-exclusive agreement, the two companies will develop a series of scientific application notes that describe challenging or novel applications that can be more easily accomplished using the combination of Agilent and Qiagen products. The first application note, “Using the Agilent 2100 bioanalyzer for analysis of His-tag removal from recombinant proteins” has already been published (publication number 5988-8144EN) and is available in Agilent’s online library at www.chem.agilent.com. Initial research application areas are expected to include biological sample preparation and multiplex PCR.