EMD Partners With Rules-Based Medicine to Develop and Distribute Multi-Analyte Kits

EMD Chemicals (EMD), a subsidiary of Merck KGaA (Merck) of Darmstadt, Germany, announced today that it is partnering with Rules-Based Medicine, Inc. (RBM), the leading multiplexed biomarker testing laboratory for the life sciences industry, to develop and distribute high-quality immunoassay products on the Luminex^® xMAP^® platform under the Novagen brand. Under the terms of the agreement, RBM is granting EMD/Merck exclusive distribution rights to the largest catalog of quantitative protein multiplex assays currently available.

RBM of Austin, TX, will combine its comprehensive testing content with the international sales and marketing network of EMD/Merck to provide optimized kits that enable researchers to measure hundreds of important biomarkers from serum, plasma and other biological fluids.

“We’re pleased to be working with RBM to bring these highly validated multi-analyte profiling kits to the worldwide market,” said Lisa Johnson, Vice President Corporate Development with EMD. “Working together, we will leverage the first-class reputation of RBM and their extensive assay content with our global sales and distribution network to deliver a wide range of reproducible and quantitative immunoassay kits to researchers worldwide.”

“While we’ve been very successful in developing these assays and providing testing services to our clients, we realized that we needed to satisfy the demands of the broader research market by packaging our immunoassay products as kits,” said RBM CEO T. Craig Benson. “EMD/Merck provides the international sales and marketing infrastructure to distribute these kits, co-branded with their well-known and respected Novagen^® brand.”

Scheduled for availability in mid-2008, the co-branded kits will be sold to pharmaceutical and biotech companies, and academic institutions. RBM and EMD/Merck will also collaborate to design new products that meet the evolving requirements of their customers.