26 May 2011: NorDiag has agreed to an OEM-agreement with MP Biomedicals. MP Biomedicals has already ordered 10 instruments under the agreement that will be delivered in Q2-2011. MP Biomedicals is a global player with 55 000 products in the Life Science and diagnostics market. "We believe this deal can fuel our visibility in the Life Science market substantially," comments CEO of NorDiag, Mårten Wigstøl.

The rationale for the agreement is a very good fit between MP Biomedicals sample lysis instrument and the Arrow sample preparation instrument. MP Biomedicals has more than 6 000 units of the sample lysis instrument in the market that will be targeted with the Arrow instrument.

MP Biomedicals is a world-wide corporation, with ISO-certified and FDA-approved manufacturing and distribution facilities throughout the globe. The Company is headquartered in Southern California. MP Biomedicals is owned by Mr. Milan Panic - the previous CEO and main shareholder of ICN Pharmaceuticals and well known as one of the leading entrepreneurs in US biotech. See further information at www.mpbio.com.

"Needless to say, there is a strong strategic fit between MP Biomedicals and NorDiag and this deal is important for our presence in the North American life science market, and we are very pleased with this new partnership," says Wigstøl.

"We see a great strategic fit between the FastPrep systems and NorDiag's Arrow product line. Majority of MP Biomedicals FastPrep systems are used for front stage of sample processing of most difficult samples to process, such as plants, soils, gram positive bacteria, yeasts and fungies and similar samples. Most of MP customers currently use manual methods for purification following extraction mainly due to prohibitive costs of existing robotic systems for automated purification. Manual kit based purification  creates a workflow bottleneck in molecular biology lab and we are looking forward into breaking this  last  remaining bottleneck in molecular biology process flow, by combination of Arrow and Fast Prep platforms.  We are excited to be able to offer to our customers for the first time in industry the complete automated affordable automated sample prep workflow solution for difficult samples, based on NorDiag platforms. MP Biomedicals is also looking forward into expanding use space of NorDiag platforms to RNA and proteins purification with a joint development of a new protocols and kits, said Dr. Miodrag Micic, Vice President, R&D, MP Biomedicals LLC."   

Contact:
CEO Mårten Wigstøl       Phone +47 911 65775
        
About NorDiag:
NorDiag is a biotechnology company developing, manufacturing and marketing automated solutions (instruments and reagents) for sample preparation of DNA from difficult biological samples. DNA diagnostics give more rapid and precise answers, and are the fastest growing field within diagnostics. The Company's sample preparation solutions are today used in connection with STI, tuberculosis, MRSA, respiratory pathogens and viruses on instruments for large and small laboratories. NorDiag was founded in 2003 and has its headquarters in Oslo, Norway. The Company has offices and laboratories in Stockholm, Sweden and in Atlanta (GA), USA. The group has today 35.3 man-labour years. NorDiag is listed on Oslo Stock Exchange with ticker NORD.

For further information - www.nordiag.com

Read the notice in Norwegian here