Luminex Corporation Expands Life Science and Biodefense Groups

AUSTIN, Texas, April 24, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Luminex Corporation (NASDAQ: LMNX) today announced the expansion of two dedicated groups within its organization:  the Life Science and the Biodefense Groups, each with focused initiatives on the development of Luminex technology into these important market segments.   While already participating in these markets, further investment in these groups provides additional growth opportunities to build Luminex leadership, advance scientific research and provide solutions for these evolving markets.

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Life Sciences

The Luminex Life Sciences Group provides custom, high-throughput assay solutions for gene expression and genotyping research.  "Our technology offers researchers a unique combination of benefits that both accelerate understanding of complex biological systems and reduce costs," said Tom Copa, vice president of Luminex Life Sciences.  "Using our systems, researchers no longer need to choose between the number of transcripts or alleles measured and the number of samples processed per project. They can have large numbers of both."

The need to validate discoveries made through sequencing and microarrays, combined with the need to improve early compound screening and ADMET studies in drug discovery, is driving the desire to measure many genes across large numbers of samples.  To address this unmet need, Luminex Life Sciences has launched the FlexScript™ LDA gene expression assay, which allows researchers to measure the expression of a custom set of genes.  Combined with the FLEXMAP 3D® instrument, FlexScript LDA empowers researchers to assay up to 500 genes per sample, with a throughput of thousands of samples per day.

Biodefense

The additional investment in the Luminex Biodefense Group further accelerates the company's biothreat detection applications in development.  "There are many exciting opportunities where Luminex technology can make a significant impact," said Amy Altman, Ph.D. and vice president of Luminex's Biodefense group.  "Unlike other biothreat detection systems, our technology has the ability to simultaneously detect multiple potential agents and process multiple samples with greater throughput.  This unique feature provides significant power and speed in biothreat detection." 

In addition to ongoing initiatives in the area of environmental detection, Luminex is also involved in biodefense-related programs and grants aimed at the development of a hand-held multiplex point-of-care diagnostic platform for the detection of biothreat agent exposure and biosurveillance.

"We are excited by the growth opportunities these evolving market segments represent.  The expansion in both biodefense and life science reflects our commitment to broadening our leadership in areas beyond life science research proteins and clinical diagnostics and developing solutions to meet the varied needs of our diverse customer base," said Patrick J. Balthrop, president and chief executive officer of Luminex. "Our mission is to improve the health, safety and quality of life for people around the world. These initiatives highlight and support that effort."

The activities of these groups are primarily associated with the development and sale of assay products and therefore will be reported as part of Luminex's Assays and Related Products Segment.

About Luminex Corporation

Luminex is committed to applying its passion for innovation to advancing healthcare and research worldwide. We are transforming global healthcare and life-science research through the development, manufacturing, and marketing of proprietary instruments and assays utilizing our xMAP® open-architecture, multi-analyte platform, and our MultiCode® real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and multiplex PCR-based technologies, that deliver cost-effective and rapid results to clinicians and researchers. Our technology is commercially available worldwide and in use in leading clinical laboratories as well as major pharmaceutical, diagnostic, biotechnology and life-science companies. We are meeting the needs of customers in markets as diverse as clinical diagnostics, pharmaceutical drug discovery, biomedical research including genomic and proteomic research, personalized medicine, bio-defense research and food safety. For further information on Luminex Corporation and the latest advances in multiplexing using award winning technology please visit our website at http://www.luminexcorp.com.

SOURCE Luminex Corporation