News Release

Unilabs and BGI sign innovative collaboration agreement

Business Announcement

BGI Shenzhen

Geneva and Copenhagen, May 7, 2014 - Unilabs, a leading medical diagnostic services company in Europe and BGI, one of the world's largest genomics research centres, have signed a collaboration agreement. This partnership will strengthen Unilabs' position as a leader in genetic testing, complementing the very broad range of genetics services offered throughout an integrated lab network. Unilabs is committed to bringing innovative tests and solutions to customers in Europe.

BGI, with European headquarters in Copenhagen, Denmark, has a lab facility with 10 high-throughput machines serving its European partners. The collaboration agreement with Unilabs will extend the reach of BGI genomics technology within Europe, giving customers access to more innovative panels and tests. Bringing two leaders in genetics together will extend and strengthen the genetic offering currently available, including the latest technologies in Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) and bioinformatics.

Thanks to this innovative collaboration agreement, European clinicians will have access to more accurate diagnoses, and improved therapy selection in areas such as cancer treatment, cardiovascular treatment and pre-natal testing.

Dr. Cong Yu, COO of BGI Europe said, "We are very pleased to form collaboration with Unilabs. With our efforts, the collaboration will bring genomics technology into Europe and significantly improve healthcare of local people."

Fernando de Górgolas, Unilabs General Manager International Business said, "This agreement is consistent with our strategy of becoming a leader in genetics. We are very proud of joining forces with BGI to bring innovative tests to our customers."

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About BGI:

BGI was founded in Beijing, China, in 1999 with the mission to become a premier scientific partner for the global research community. The goal of BGI is to make leading-edge genomic science highly accessible, which it achieves through its investment in infrastructure, leveraging the best available technology, economies of scale, and expert bioinformatics resources. BGI, and its affiliates, BGI Americas, headquartered in Cambridge, MA, and BGI Europe, headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark, have established partnerships and collaborations with leading academic and government research institutions as well as global biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, supporting a variety of disease, agricultural, environmental, and related applications.

BGI has a proven track record of excellence, delivering results with high efficiency and accuracy for innovative, high-profile research: research that has generated over 200 publications in toptier journals such as Nature and Science. BGI's many accomplishments include: sequencing one percent of the human genome for the International Human Genome Project, contributing 10 percent to the International Human HapMap Project, carrying out research to combat SARS and German deadly E. coli, playing a key role in the Sino-British Chicken Genome Project, and completing the sequence of the rice genome, the silkworm genome, the first Asian diploid genome, the potato genome, and, more recently, have sequenced the human Gut Metagenome, and a significant proportion of the genomes for the 1000 Genomes Project. For more information about BGI, please visit http://www.genomics.cn.

About Unilabs:

We are one of Europe's leading suppliers of clinical laboratory testing and medical diagnostic imaging services to private and public healthcare providers, local governments, insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies and the general public. We operate laboratory and medical diagnostic imaging facilities in 11 countries: Denmark, Finland, France, Italy, Norway, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Our network of facilities provides us with one of the broadest geographic footprints of any clinical laboratory and medical diagnostic services provider in Europe.

For more information about Unilabs, please visit http://www.unilabs.com.

Contact Information:

Bicheng Yang, Ph.D.
Public Communication Officer
BGI
+86-755-82639701
yangbicheng@genomics.cn
http://www.genomics.cn


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