Agencourt Bioscience Launches RNA Isolation and Purification Kit.

BEVERLY, Mass. -- RNAPrep Leverages Company's SPRI(R) Magnetic Bead Technology

Agencourt Bioscience Corporation, a provider of genomic services and nucleic acid purification products to the life sciences industry, today announced the expansion of its reagents product line with the release of a new kit for RNA isolation and purification.

The RNAPrep(TM) kit is optimized for isolating total RNA from eukaryotic cultured cells. The kit leverages the company's SPRI(R) (Solid Phase Reversible Immobilization) magnetic bead technology that delivers high yield and purification for quality nucleic acid retrieval. Total RNA isolation is routinely used in many experimental applications including microarray and RT-PCR gene expression analysis. The RNAPrep kit method has been formatted to work in single tube through fully automated plate formats with streamlined processing times of under 20 minutes.

RNAPrep is the second RNA-based product that the company has released this year. RNAClean(TM), a purification kit designed for in vitro cDNA and RNA clean up, complements the new RNAPrep isolation kit. The combination of the RNAPrep and RNAClean kits ideally meets the needs of researchers who are isolating and amplifying total RNA where extraction and purification of RNA and cDNA is required.

"With RNAPrep, Agencourt explicitly addresses the need for automated isolation of high quality RNA for downstream applications such as gene expression analysis. Most RNA kits deliver marginal recovery, medium quality with little potential for automation. SPRI addresses the need for automation friendly protocols, while delivering the highest recovery and highest quality RNA," said Kevin McKernan, Agencourt's Chief Scientific Officer. "The excellent total RNA yield, purity and format flexibility that RNAPrep delivers will enable individual researchers and core facilities to obtain improved quality and reproducible data in RNA based gene expression experiments."

About Agencourt Bioscience Corporation

Agencourt Bioscience Corporation is a leading provider of genomic services and nucleic acid purification products in the life sciences market. Our products and services support the advancement of science in understanding biology, improving health and delivering safe and effective treatments for disease.

Agencourt's purification products and services are based on the proven and patented Solid Phase Reversible Immobilization (SPRI(TM)) technology, which has been adopted by several of the largest genome research facilities and used to sequence over one-third of the human genome. Agencourt is one of five NHGRI-funded Large-Scale Sequencing Centers whose goal is to sequence genomes of organisms of high biomedical importance. The company's state-of-the-art facilities are guided by the FDA's Good Laboratory Practices (GLP) as a contract analytical laboratory. Agencourt is located in Beverly, Massachusetts. For more information on our company, products and services we invite you to visit our website at www.agencourt.com.