454 Life Sciences Unveils New Bench Top Sequencer, Significant Improvements to the Genome Sequencer FLX System Including 1,000 b

BRANFORD, Conn., Nov 19, 2009 (BUSINESS WIRE) --
RHHBY | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating -- 454 Life Sciences, a Roche Company (SWX:RO)
(SWX:ROG) (Pink Sheets: RHHBY), announced today at the Association
of Molecular Pathology Annual Meeting in Kissimmee, Florida a series of
revolutionary developments which significantly expand the company's
high-throughput sequencing portfolio. Addressing the growing demand for
next-generation sequencing data in everyday biological and clinical
research, the company revealed the new GS Junior System, an affordable
bench top sequencing platform slated for release in 2010.

The GS
Junior System, which is no bigger than a typical laser printer, has
performance and features tuned to fit the needs of small to medium sized
laboratories. The platform will launch with long-read GS Junior Titanium
chemistry, offering 400 -- 500 bp read lengths, and will be shipped with
a desktop computer that is optimized for GS Junior Run processing and
downstream data analysis. "With the GS Junior System, we are extremely
excited to make next-generation sequencing readily available to the
individual researcher, just as the PC brought computing to the masses,"
said Christopher McLeod, President and CEO of 454 Life Sciences. "This
truly enabling technology is now affordable for nearly every research
lab. At the same time, we continue to extend the performance of our
flagship Genome Sequencer FLX System."

The company announced plans to initiate an early access program for
development of the next set of performance improvements to the Genome
Sequencer FLX System, which will double the read length of the
current GS FLX Titanium Kits and expect to contain reads up to 1,000 bp.
The DOE Joint Genome Institute will be the first site to begin early
access later this month and will use the long-read chemistries to
sequence a variety of large, complex genomes. Additional early access
partners are expected to be announced in the near future.

"The value of our longer read lengths, coupled with the latest advances
in our assembler software, have been demonstrated by the successful
conclusion of a number of recent de novo sequencing projects,
such as the cod fish genome," explained Michael Egholm, CTO and Vice
President of R&D of 454
Life Sciences. "The Genome Sequencer FLX System provides a robust
platform to sequence and assemble nearly any size genome quickly,
without the need for supplementary Sanger data."

The company's final announcement at the event was the launch and
immediate availability of several new kits, protocols and software
updates for the Genome Sequencer FLX System. The new products enable two
new major application areas to take advantage of the long 400-500 bp
reads and increased density of the GS FLX Titanium series chemistry -
transcriptome sequencing and amplicon (PCR product) sequencing.
Additional product updates highlight the company's continued efforts to
ease workflow, including a new Rapid Library Preparation Kit which takes
around half of the time and requires significantly less input DNA, and a
set of 12 Rapid Library Multiplex Identifier (MID) Adaptors for sample
pooling.

Significant improvements to the complete suite of GS Data Analysis
Software are evident in the new GS De Novo Assembler software,
now capable of processing data sets from human-sized genomes (3Gb) and
transcriptomes. Together the new cDNA sequencing protocol and assembler
software offer a complete solution for de novo transcriptome
sequencing and analysis, enabling a comprehensive picture of the gene
space of nearly any organism, even previously uncharacterized species.

"We are finding that the long EST reads generated by the Genome
Sequencer FLX System often readily span multiple exons and are aligned
with a high degree of uniqueness when analyzed with our new
transcriptome assembler software," said Egholm. "We believe this
solution will yield significant advantages over existing approaches due
to the ease of assembly and the ability to characterize alternatively
spliced transcripts for a wide range of organisms, without the need for
a reference."

Finally, the latest set of GS
FLX Titanium Kits include a new solution for targeted amplicon
sequencing applications, now supporting ultra-deep sequencing of long
400 bp amplicons. "Amplicon sequencing with the Genome Sequencer FLX
System has paved the way for important medical research over the past
few years, including detection of low-frequency drug-resistance variants
in HIV-infected samples, and high-resolution HLA sequencing and typing,"
explained McLeod. "GS FLX Titanium Amplicon sequencing will push these
studies to the next level by allowing amplicon designs similar to those
currently used in Sanger amplicon sequencing, with the additional
benefit of up to 1 million clonal reads per run."

For more information on 454 Sequencing Systems, visit www.454.com.
To visit the GS Junior micro-site, visit www.gsjunior.com.

About Roche

Headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, Roche is one of the world's leading
research-focused healthcare groups in the fields of pharmaceuticals and
diagnostics. As the world's biggest biotech company and an innovator of
products and services for the early detection, prevention, diagnosis and
treatment of diseases, the Group contributes on a broad range of fronts
to improving people's health and quality of life. Roche is the world
leader in in-vitro diagnostics and drugs for cancer and transplantation,
and is a market leader in virology. It is also active in other major
therapeutic areas such as autoimmune diseases, inflammatory and
metabolic disorders and diseases of the central nervous system. In 2008
sales by the Pharmaceuticals Division totalled 36.0 billion Swiss
francs, and the Diagnostics Division posted sales of 9.7 billion francs.
Roche has R&D agreements and strategic alliances with numerous partners,
including majority ownership interests in Genentech and Chugai, and
invested nearly 9 billion Swiss francs in R&D in 2008. Worldwide, the
Group employs about 80,000 people. Additional information is available
on the Internet at www.roche.com.

For life science research only. Not for use in diagnostic procedures.

454, 454 SEQUENCING, 454 LIFE SCIENCES, GS FLX, GS FLX TITANIUM, and GS
JUNIOR are trademarks of Roche.

SOURCE: Roche

Roche Diagnostics 
Dr. Burkhard Ziebolz 
Phone: +49 8856 604830 
Email: burkhard.ziebolz@roche.com 
or 
454 Life Sciences Corporation, a Roche company 
Dr. Ulrich Schwoerer 
Phone: 203-871-2300 
Email: ulrich.schwoerer@roche.com

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