Kyoto, Japan, January 10, 2002--- The Biomedical Group of Takara Shuzo Co., Ltd. announced today that the company entered a nonexclusive license agreement with ID Biochemical Corporation (Vancouver, BC, Canada), under which Takara Biomedical Group receives rights to the use of ID Biochemical's Cycling Probe Technology (CPT) to manufacture and market diagnostic kits. In addition, the Group receives rights to use ID Biochemical's patents regarding DNA-RNA-DNA chimera nucleic acids. ID Biochemical is a biotech company developing vaccines for a number of infectious diseases. The biotech company also has broad patents relating to gene detection technology such as CPT, and is actively licensing those patents to other companies.

The CPT is a highly sensitive nucleic acid detection tool and the combination with Takara's technologies will produce more powerful gene detection tools. The Takara Biomedical Group has recently developed an innovative gene amplification technology, named ICAN method, which can be done at a constant temperature, and SNP typing technology, named UCAN method. ICAN and UCAN methods are efficient DNA amplification tools and can be used in combination with various detection technologies. The Group believes CPT is a highly sensitive detection tool suitable for ICAN and UCAN methods. Development of diverse gene detection kits by Takara will possibly accelerated by the ID Biochemical's technology. Takara will apply CPT to the ICAN diagnostic kits for Mycobacterium tuberculosis, Chlamydia, and Neisseria gonorrhoeae. In addition, CPT can be used as a detection tool for Smart Cycler^®, a highly versatile and efficient thermal cycler with real-time optical detection. Useful kits for Smart Cycler^® will be also developed.

This article is translated from press release in Japanese for your convenience.