Beckman Coulter and SRL, Inc. Enter Exclusive Agreement to Service Japan Immune Monitoring Market.

Business Editors/Health & Medical Writers

FULLERTON, Calif.--(BW HealthWire)--May 28, 2002

Beckman Coulter, Inc. (NYSE:BEC) announced today that they have signed an agreement with SRL, Inc. making SRL the exclusive provider of third-party testing services utilizing Beckman Coulter's iTAg(TM) MHC Tetramers in Japan. Through this agreement, SRL will market the immune response testing panels to their extensive and established list of clients served by more than 1,400 sales and marketing representatives currently promoting highly technical and specialized testing services to their research, pharmaceutical and clinical customers.

Beckman Coulter's expansion of Tetramer technology into the Japan testing market through the country's largest service provider establishes an immediate avenue for rapid expansion of immune response research in diseases most common in Japan. This will include certain transplantation applications and infectious diseases such as Hepatitis C, which affects over 2 million individuals in Japan each year and is one of the leading causes of death. The agreement with SRL to provide consigned testing services strengthens Beckman Coulter's position in Japan.

Beckman Coulter is an exclusive licensee of MHC Tetramer technology from Stanford University. iTAg MHC Tetramers are research use only products which enable accurate, ex vivo, quantitative analysis of T cells. Research documented in over 400 publications illustrates that Tetramers have been used successfully to accurately and efficiently monitor CD8+ T cell responses in viruses, parasitic infections, cancer, autoimmune diseases and complications with transplant patients caused by infectious diseases.

Beckman Coulter, Inc.

Beckman Coulter, Inc. is a global biomedical company, headquartered in Fullerton, California. The company develops and markets instruments, chemistries, software and supplies that simplify and automate laboratory processes throughout the biomedical testing continuum. Through pioneering medical research and drug discovery, specialty testing, and patient care diagnostics, Beckman Coulter supports all phases of the battle against disease. Annual sales for the company totaled $2 billion in 2001, with 62% of this amount generated by recurring revenue from supplies, chemistry kits and services. For more information, visit www.beckmancoulter.com. More information about iTAg MHC Tetramer technology is available at www.immunomics.com.

* Beckman Coulter is an exclusive licensee for the following patents:

US Patent Number 5,635,363 Inventors: J.D. Altman, M.G. McHeyzer-Williams and Mark M. Davis. Compositions and methods for the detection, quantitation and purification of antigen-specific T cells. French Application Number FR9911133. Inventor: F. Lang. Means for detecting and for the purifying CD8+ T-lymphocyte populations specific for peptides presented in the HLA context.