Strategic Diagnostics Inc. Enters Supply Agreement for Antibody Library for Study of Chromosome Proteins with University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
Portfolio to be made available through SDI's SEQer™ Antibody Product Catalog
NEWARK, Del., May 6, 2008 - Strategic Diagnostics Inc. (Nasdaq: SDIX) a leading provider of
biotechnology-based detection solutions for a broad range of food, water, agricultural, industrial, environmental and
life science applications, announced that it will be providing Jason Lieb's Laboratory at University of North
Carolina, Chapel Hill with a library of antibodies produced through SDI's proprietary Genomic Antibody
Technology™ (GAT) platform. Lieb has selected these antibodies for use in his work that is part of the National
Human Genome Research Institute's model-organism ENCODE (modENCODE) Project. The project is working
to identify and characterize DNA sequence elements and proteins that control genome activity in the Caenorhabditis
elegans (worm) and Drosophila melanogaster (fruit fly) genomes. These two model organism species represent the
most advanced models for the understanding of the corresponding human regulatory proteins.
Lieb's project, sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, will focus specifically on those areas of the genome
that regulate chromosomal functions such as transcription, DNA replication and repair, recombination and
chromosome segregation. The project is dependent upon quality antibodies to profile the protein dynamics in the
study systems. Jason Lieb, a faculty member in the Department of Biology and Carolina Center for Genome
Sciences stated, "Seeing the performance of GAT antibodies in our pilot program was clear reason for our team to
change the entire strategy for generating our library. The GAT system also eliminates my team's need to generate
antigens - allowing us to focus on our scientific goals and not reagent production."
Matthew H. Knight, SDI's President and Chief Executive Officer, commented, "We are very pleased to have been
selected to generate this library to further the understanding of chromosome function on the protein level.
Decisions in the Life Science industry are based on performance and availability of resources. The Lieb group
selected SDI and GAT due to the clear financial benefit of our technology and success rates beyond traditional
methods."
In the arrangement, SDI will retain the commercial rights to the antibodies produced and will be the sole
commercial distributer to the scientific community through the SDI's SEQer™ catalog.
About Strategic Diagnostics Inc.
Strategic Diagnostics Inc. is a leading provider of antibody technology to the Life Science
market place. Additionally the company provides biotechnology-based detection solutions
for a broad range of food, water, agricultural, and environmental applications. By applying its
core competencies of antibody and assay development, the Company produces unique,
sophisticated reagents, reagent systems, antibody design services and bio-detection solutions
to customer needs. Customers benefit from the enablement of their research into critical
health care challenges of disease understanding, therapeutic development and diagnostic
discovery. Industrial customers benefit with quantifiable "return on investment" by
reducing time, labor, and/or material costs. All this is accomplished while increasing
accuracy, reliability and actionability of essential test results. The Company is focused on
sustaining this competitive advantage by leveraging its expertise in antibody design,
immunology, proteomics, bio-luminescence and other bio-reactive technologies to continue
its successful customer-focused research and development efforts. Recent innovations in
high throughput production of antibodies from genetic antigens will complement the
Company's established leadership in commercial and custom antibody production for the
Research, Human/Animal Diagnostics, and Pharmaceutical industries, and position the
Company for broader participation in proteomics research and discovery.
This news release contains forward-looking statements reflecting SDI's current expectations. When used in this press release, the words "anticipate",
"could", "enable", "estimate", "intend", "expect", "believe", "potential", "will", "should", "project", "plan" and similar expressions as they relate to
SDI are intended to identify said forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned that all forward-looking statements involve risks and
uncertainties, which may cause actual results to differ from those anticipated by SDI at this time. Such risks and uncertainties include, without
limitation, changes in demand for products, delays in product development, delays in market acceptance of new products, retention of customers and
employees, adequate supply of raw materials, the successful integration and consolidation of the Maine production facilities, inability to obtain or delays
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intellectual property, non-infringement of intellectual property, seasonality, and other factors more fully described in SDI's public filings with the U.S.
Securities and Exchange Commission.
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