Berkeley Lights Selects Tekon as Partner to Expand into Chinese Market

EMERYVILLE, Calif., Oct. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Berkeley Lights, Inc. (BLI), a company dedicated to the development of transformational technologies for biopharmaceutical processes, announced today that its Beacon™ optofluidic platform is now available to customers in Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan through their partner Tekon Biotech. BLI and Tekon will work closely to provide customers with innovative solutions for cell line development, antibody discovery and engineering, and other research areas.

"China is a key market for Berkeley Lights and has the fastest growing biopharmaceutical sector," said Keith Breinlinger, Ph.D., General Manager Life Sciences and SVP of Platform Engineering at BLI. "Tekon Biotech is a leading provider of solutions for biology applications with impressive market reach and a strong technical team. Our partnership with Tekon will help our customers in Greater China maximize the impact of the Beacon platform on their discovery and development processes."

"The Beacon platform truly is a revolutionary system that enables precise cell by cell selection and manipulation," said David Hadfield, CEO of Tekon Biotech. "We've worked closely with Berkeley Lights over the past few months to assess the opportunity in China and have seen significant interest from major Chinese biopharmaceutical companies, key academic institutions and leading contract research organizations. As China continues to prioritize bioscience innovation and embrace precision medicine on a massive scale, we see a bright future for Berkeley Lights in areas such as cell line development, antibody discovery, gene editing and cell therapy."

About Tekon:
Tekon Biotech, founded in 1988, sells and supports a broad range of technologies for the China life sciences market. Tekon's customers include all major pharmaceutical and biotech companies plus the top 50 universities. Tekon is headquartered in Shanghai with offices in Hong Kong and Taipei. Tekon Biotech takes pride in providing the highest level of service and technical support. For more information, visit www.tekontech.com.

About Berkeley Lights:
Berkeley Lights, Inc. (BLI) develops and commercializes platforms on which many bio-pharmaceutical, genomic, and cellular therapy applications will run. BLI launched its first commercial platform, the Beacon*, in December 2016. The Beacon platform is ideally suited for cell line development and direct B-cell (plasma and memory cells) antibody discovery workflows. The flexibility of the Beacon platform allows users to automate biological processes and BLI is continuously developing new applications to align with its partners' requirements. BLI's technologies make it possible for customers to accelerate learning and dramatically improve workflows.

To learn more about how customers can use the Beacon platform, visit https://www.berkeleylights.com/beacon-applications/.

* For Research Use Only. Not for use in diagnostic procedures.

SOURCE Berkeley Lights, Inc.

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