Sigma-Aldrich Announces Collaboration With Metahelix Life Sciences

Partnership to provide expertise and applications support in plant
biotechnology

ST. LOUIS, July 8 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Sigma-Aldrich
(Nasdaq: SIAL) and Metahelix Life Sciences today announced a partnership
under which Metahelix will assist in developing applications data for
Sigma-Aldrich's plant bioscience product line, and provide expert
technological guidance regarding usage. The efforts of this collaboration
will occur in Metahelix's existing facility, located adjacent to
Sigma-Aldrich's manufacturing and distribution center in Bangalore, India,
and provide support for Sigma-Aldrich customers throughout the Pacific Rim
and Latin America.
"The plant biotechnology market is growing rapidly in Latin America
and Asia as biofuels and the rapid expansion of urban centers drives
increased demand for higher productivity crops," said Susan Riley,
director of international business at Sigma-Aldrich. "This partnership
with Metahelix is expected to enable us to support our customers with
practical guidance by a firm that works with a number of different species
of plants."
Guatham Nadig, head of research and development at Metahelix, said:
"Metahelix will benefit from visibility of new tools available to develop
our commercial offerings in the plant bioscience area."
Sigma-Aldrich serves the plant biotechnology research market with a
variety of genomic and proteomic solutions, including whole genome
amplification and RNA purification kits
(http://www.sigmaaldrich.com/plant). The Company's leading
Extract-N-Amp(TM) plant PCR technology dramatically reduces the amount of
time required to extract and amplify genomic DNA from plant tissue,
facilitating rapid screening. Sigma-Aldrich's SpyLine(TM) plant mRNA
capture kits allow for the isolation of mRNA and performance of RT-PCR in
a single 96-well PCR plate incorporating Oligo (dT) primers, eliminating
transfer steps and increasing throughput. Unique to the market, the
Company's Spectrum(TM) Plant Total RNA Kits succeed where most protocols
fail, employing patent-pending lysis and binding chemistry to purify total
RNA from plant tissues that contain high levels of secondary metabolites.
To learn more about Sigma-Aldrich's extensive offering of products and
kits for the plant bioscience research community, visit
http://www.sigmaaldrich.com/plant.
About Sigma-Aldrich: Sigma-Aldrich is a leading Life Science and High
Technology company. Its biochemical and organic chemical products and
kits are used in scientific and genomic research, biotechnology,
pharmaceutical development, the diagnosis of disease and as key components
in pharmaceutical and other high technology manufacturing. The Company
has customers in life science companies, university and government
institutions, hospitals, and in industry. Over one million scientists and
technologists use its products. Sigma-Aldrich operates in 36 countries
and has 7,900 employees providing excellent service worldwide.
Sigma-Aldrich is committed to Accelerating Customer Success through
Leadership in Life Science, High Technology and Service. For more
information about Sigma-Aldrich, please visit its award-winning Web site
at http://www.sigma-aldrich.com.
About Metahelix: Metahelix is an agricultural biotechnology company
focusing on developing traits and technologies for crop protection &
improved productivity. Hybrid Seeds and traits are commercialized by its
wholly owned subsidiary seeds business Dhaanya Seeds. Metahelix also
provides customized research to select global Ag-biotech business using
its proprietary technologies in crop transformation and functional
genomics. Metahelix is based at Bangalore India, which is home to a
growing number of new-age high technology ventures. For more information
about Metahelix, visit http://www.meta-helix.com/.
Cautionary Statement: This release contains forward-looking statements
relating to future performance, goals, strategic actions and initiatives
and similar intentions and beliefs and other statements regarding the
Companies' expectations, goals, beliefs, intentions and the like, which
involve assumptions regarding the Companies' operations and conditions in
the markets the Companies serve. The Companies do not undertake any
obligation to update these forward-looking statements.
Sigma-Aldrich, Spectrum, SpyLine and Extract-N-Amp are trademarks of
Sigma-Aldrich Biotechnology L.P. and Sigma-Aldrich Co.
SOURCE Sigma-Aldrich

Sean Battles of Sigma-Aldrich, +1-314-286-7616, sean.battles@sial.com