Exiqon licenses LNA technology to BD for diagnosing infectious diseases

Exiqon A/S (Copenhagen:EXQ), today announced that it has granted a non-exclusive license to BD (Becton, Dickinson and Company) to use Exiqon's proprietary locked nucleic acids (LNA(TM)) technology in defined products for infectious disease diagnostics.

Exiqon will receive upfront and milestone payments, and royalty on global sales of the products covered by this agreement. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed. The U.S. DNA-based infectious diseases testing market is estimated by Frost and Sullivan to exceed $2 billion in 2010. This agreement marks the first time LNA(TM) will be applied in the development of FDA-cleared diagnostic products.

"We are pleased to see BD has chosen to apply Exiqon's proprietary technology enabling these exciting new diagnostic products," said Lars Kongsbak, CEO & President of Exiqon. "We are excited that the LNA(TM) technology is now being applied to advanced diagnostic products."

Under the terms of this agreement, BD will market a number of defined LNA(TM)-enhanced products to run on the new BD MAX(TM) System, BD's next-generation platform for molecular diagnostics based on real-time polymerase chain reaction.

LNA(TM) provides unique characteristics to molecular assays and offers many potential enhancements for developing advanced products. An inherent part of Exiqon's strategy to capitalize on its proprietary LNA(TM) technology is through license agreements within market segments that Exiqon does not plan to pursue itself.