WaferGen and Luxembourg Announce Agreement Toward WaferGen European Headquarters in Luxembourg

FREMONT, Calif. and LUXEMBOURG, March 29 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- WaferGen Biosystems, Inc. (OTC Bulletin Board: WGBS), a leading developer of state-of-the-art genetic analysis systems, and the Luxembourg Government today announced an agreement toward locating the company's European headquarters in Luxembourg as part of WaferGen's commercialization strategy for its SmartChip Real-Time PCR System.  The agreement was signed Friday, March 26, 2010 at WaferGen's new world headquarters facility in Fremont, Calif., by WaferGen and Mr. Jeannot Krecke, Minister of the Economy and Foreign Trade.  Crown Prince Guillaume of Luxembourg and Mr. Krecke led a delegation to WaferGen to discuss mutual interests to advance personalized medicine.

The activities and functions to be performed by WaferGen at this location would include European marketing and sales, service and support, distribution, management of any subsidiaries and distributors, IP management, and some R&D activities.  

The Luxembourg Government intends to apply instruments based on a recently passed law on research and innovation to facilitate the implementation of WaferGen's European development project.  The agreement is tentatively set to be finalized by the fourth quarter 2010.

The Luxembourg delegation visited WaferGen to learn more about the potential role of the company's SmartChip system and other gene analysis programs in Luxembourg's  $200 million biomedical initiative to harness genomics technologies for the study of human health problems.  The initiative is designed to grow Luxembourg's personalized medicine capabilities.   It includes creating a biobank, a tissue repository, two molecular biology research endeavors, and a project focused on early detection and treatment of lung cancer. 

"The location of our European operations in Luxembourg, which is centrally located in Europe and focused on the advancement of personalized medicine, would facilitate the sale and distribution of our SmartChip system throughout Europe," said Alnoor Shivji, Chairman and CEO, WaferGen.  "This is another important step in our commercialization strategy and combines with the receipt of a CE Mark for the SmartChip system and our collaboration at Ghent University in Belgium to further our international sales expansion."

"The Luxembourg government welcomes WaferGen's plans to become part of the vibrant community of organizations developing programs, resources, and regimes to advance personalized medicine," said Mr. Krecke. "The company has much to offer to our efforts at increasing the pace of innovation based on cutting-edge research in molecular biology, systems biology and personalized medicine."

Personalized medicine is the use of information about a person's genes, proteins, and environment to prevent, diagnose and treat disease.  Sequencing of the human genome has brought about a new healthcare paradigm in which disease is understood at the molecular level, providing the potential for a patient to be diagnosed according to genetic information and treated with therapeutics designed to work on specific molecular targets.

With personalized medicine, drug developers can target specific biomarkers and develop therapies to address specific diseases.  The optimum results will be a more efficient drug development process and likely more effective drugs.

This has led to the need for accurate, highly sensitive, comprehensive gene expression data by researchers, clinicians and pharmaceutical companies.  Today's analytical tools to comprehend differences in genes provide incomplete data or are too expensive to be practical in the development process.  The gene analysis of cancer, for example, has proved much more complex than originally anticipated.

"Current gene analysis technology is much like going into a dark room with a flashlight and only seeing what the beam of light shows instead of seeing the entire room if it were well-lighted," said Shivji. "WaferGen's SmartChip System combines the functions of exploration and validation providing researchers with a single platform for more comprehensive, affordable gene analysis."

About WaferGen

WaferGen Biosystems, Inc. is an emerging leader in the development, manufacture and sale of state-of-the-art systems for genetic analysis for the life science and pharmaceutical industries. The company recently launched its new innovative fee-based service for gene-expression profiling while continuing to actively develop its SmartChip Real-Time PCR System that is designed as the first whole genome, high-throughput gene expression real-time PCR platform. Based on collaborations established with leading research institutions, WaferGen believes that the SmartChip Real-Time PCR System is positioned as the platform of choice for biomarker discovery and validation. For additional information, please see http://www.wafergen.com.

Forward Looking Statements

This press release contains certain "forward-looking statements".  Such statements include statements relating to the company's beliefs relating to goals of the collaboration between WaferGen and the Government of Luxembourg (including the facilitation of the sale and distribution of the SmartChip system throughout Europe), the value of SmartChip as a tool that will ultimately lead to greater accuracy for discovery of biomarkers, decreased time to results and more affordable targeted therapies, and the positioning of the company's SmartChip technology as the platform of choice for biomarker discovery and validation.  Such statements are not historical facts and may be preceded by the words "intends," "may," "will," "plans," "expects," "anticipates," "projects," "predicts," "estimates," "aims," "believes," "hopes," "potential" or similar words.

Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, are based on certain assumptions and are subject to various known and unknown risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond the control of the company. Actual results may differ materially from the expectations contained in the forward-looking statements. Factors that may cause such differences include the risks that: (i) the company may be unsuccessful in commercially developing its products or in achieving market acceptance of new and relatively unproven technologies; (ii) the company will need to raise additional capital to meet its business requirements in the future and the company may not be able to do so on reasonable terms or at all; (iii) the company's proprietary intellectual property rights may not adequately protect its products and technologies; and (iv) the company expects intense competition in its target markets, including from companies that have much greater resources than the company, and there can be no assurance that the company will be able to compete effectively.  More detailed information about the company and the risk factors that may affect the realization of forward-looking statements is set forth in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2009.  Investors and security holders are urged to read this document free of charge on the SEC's web site at www.sec.gov. The company does not undertake to publicly update or revise its forward-looking statements as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

SOURCE WaferGen Biosystems, Inc.

WANT YOUR COMPANY'S NEWS FEATURED ON PRNEWSWIRE.COM?

440k+
Newsrooms &
Influencers

9k+
Digital Media
Outlets

270k+
Journalists
Opted In

GET STARTED