Agena Bioscience and CapitalBio Technology to Develop Cost-Effective Genetic Testing for Commercial Agricultural Applications

SAN DIEGO, Calif., March 1, 2016 – Agena Bioscience (Agena) today announced its partnership to co-develop commercial tests with CapitalBio Technology (CapitalBio) for a variety of agricultural applications on the MassARRAY^® System. The tests will be made available as certified services through CapitalBio.

“CapitalBio has established a strong presence in agriculture through strategic partnerships and government project collaborations,” said Pete Dansky, CEO. “We are enthusiastic to be selected by an established leader, to support our endeavors in production-level agricultural screening in China.”

Under the partnership, CapitalBio will commercialize a portfolio of cost-effective genetic screening tests for the livestock, horticulture, and aquaculture sectors. Agena Bioscience will authorize CapitalBio as an agriculture Certified Service Provider to reach other regional markets in addition to China.

“We foresee significant expansion and need for high-throughput, cost-effective testing to support food production,” said CapitalBio CEO, Jun Quan Xu. “The MassARRAY System is a proven, robust platform that will serve as a powerful workhorse to support our current and future testing needs from crops and seeds to fisheries and farms.”

“We are proud to partner with CapitalBio, and look forward to collaborating with a premier biotech company in agricultural testing in China,” Dansky commented.

The MassARRAY System enables high-throughput, multiplexed testing of 10s to 100s of actionable genetic variants against 100s to 1000s of samples. The platform has been implemented by leading testing centers in other agricultural areas including bovine, sheep, and canine analysis. CapitalBio will expand the utility of the MassARRAY System into genetics-based plant production and beyond.

About CapitalBio Technology

Headquartered in Beijing, China, CapitalBio Corporation is a leading life science company that develops and commercializes total health-care solutions. As a core subsidiary of CapitalBio Corporation, CapitalBio Technology provides comprehensive, top-quality products to a diverse group of end-users ranging from biomedical researchers to health care professionals. These products include a broad spectrum of innovative microarray and microfluidic chips and related instruments, software and databases, reagents and consumables for basic and translational research, drug development, clinical diagnostics, biosafety and food safety, and molecular breeding. As a pioneer in its field and industry, CapitalBio Technology also provides services for the research community in genomics, proteomics and metabolomics.

About Agena Bioscience

Agena Bioscience develops, manufactures, and supplies genetic analysis systems and reagents, including the MassARRAY® System. The system is a highly sensitive, cost-effective, mass spectrometry-based platform for high-throughput genetic analysis, and is used globally in diverse research fields such as cancer profiling for solid tumors and liquid biopsies, inherited genetic disease testing, pharmacogenetics, agricultural genomics, and clinical research. The MassARRAY System is intended for research use only, and not intended for use in diagnostic procedures.