PE Biosystems Licenses Orchid's SNP- IT Technology

Orchid BioSciences Inc. (Princeton, NJ) has granted PE Biosystems (Foster City, CA) a non-exclusive license to use Orchid's SNP-IT single base primer extension technology for single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) analysis in PE Biosystems' ABI PRISM reagent kits, including SNaPshot ddNTP Primer Extension kits. Under the terms of the agreement, PE Biosystems will produce and market kits that are licensed under U.S. patents 5,888,819 and 6,004,744, which cover Orchid's SNP-IT technology for performing SNP analyses. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

In a company press release, Orchid chairman, president, and CEO Dale Pfost commented on the agreement: "We believe that Orchid's SNP-IT primer extension technology offers users unparalleled accuracy, ease-of-use, and flexibility in the increasingly important field of SNP analysis. Orchid is delighted to have PE Biosystems… joining with us to provide SNP scoring capabilities incorporating the advantages of single base primer extension to its important and well-established customer base."

The PE Biosystems agreement is part of Orchid's Platform Propagation strategy, which capitalizes on the ability of Orchid's proprietary SNP-IT technology to be easily adapted to a variety of read-out methods and instrument platforms. By authorizing analytical instrument manufacturers to sell kits incorporating its proprietary technology, Orchid seeks to ensure that researchers can access the benefits of this SNP scoring technology using instruments already installed in their laboratories.

Orchid BioSciences Inc. is a provider of products, services, and technologies for SNP scoring and genetic diversity analyses. Orchid has developed SNP-IT, its proprietary primer extension SNP analysis technology, and markets SNPstream instruments and SNPware consumables that rapidly generate SNP information. SNP-IT is usable in environments ranging from small-scale laboratories to large commercial facilities.

For more information: Orchid BioSciences Inc., 303 College Road East, Princeton, NJ 08540. Tel: 609-750-2200. Fax: 609-750-2250.

Edited by Jim Pomager