GATC Biotech soon opens sequencing laboratory in London

Constance, Germany, November 03, 2009 / b3c newswire / - GATC Biotech, Europe’s leading sequencing service provider for industrial and academic research, announces that it will open a sequencing laboratory in London to provide scientists in UK and Ireland with single sample sequencing services. The GATC London Laboratory will be situated in the London BioScience Innovation Centre (LBIC) and will start operations on January 4, 2010.

Through the GATC London Laboratory, customers benefit from a free courier delivery service of less than 24 hours. In addition, in many cities throughout the UK and Ireland GATC offers a free sample collection service in the evening with overnight shipment directly to the GATC London Laboratory.

NightXpress - Overnight sequencing service
GATC Biotech plans to install a unique “5-to-9” overnight sequencing service, called NightXpress, which will reduce delivery times to just 16 hours from sample collection. From Monday to Friday, DNA samples will be collected for free from 5 pm at defined GATC Sample Collection Points and by 9 am the next morning, including Saturdays, DNA sequencing results will be ready for download. With GATC’s overnight service scientists will gain a head start for follow-up experiments of almost two days. NightXpress will start operations on February 15, 2010, initially with customers in London and surrounding areas.

Peter Pohl, CEO at GATC Biotech comments: “With NightXpress we offer the world’s fastest sequencing service. Being already the first company in Europe to offer commercial sequencing services, GATC Biotech once again sets new standards by delivering mass customized sequencing services with fastest delivery times and at competitive rates.”

The GATC NightXpress service was first launched in Germany in 2007 and GATC now plans to adopt the successful concept for the UK, where the company maintains a subsidiary since 2004. In the past years GATC has built a network of GATC Sample Collection Points that are located in Cambridge, Oxford, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Harwell, London, Liverpool, Leeds, Leicester, Manchester, Aberdeen, Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Dublin, and the company plans to extend this network further.

GATC Biotech applies a highly automated sequencing platform for mass customization using technologies such as Applied Biosystems ABI 3730xl, Roche Diagnostics GS FLX and Illumina Genome Analyzer IIx. The GATC London Laboratory, located nearby the Imperial College and UCL is subject to the same stringent quality standards and automation as the laboratories in GATC’s headquarters in Constance, Germany.

About GATC Biotech - www.gatc-biotech.com 
GATC Biotech is Europe’s leading service provider of DNA sequencing and bioinformatics for industry and academic research. For two decades the company has been continuously developing new and comprehensive solutions for DNA sequencing and bioinformatics sequence analysis – for individual DNA samples through to whole transcriptome and genome projects. With a total of 13 sequencing instruments (ABI 3730xl, Illumina Genome Analyzer IIx, Roche GS FLX) GATC has the largest commercially available sequencing capacity in Europe with two terabases per year. The company is the first sequencing service provider in Germany to have completed the Illumina CSPro certification process. More than 100 employees serve over 10,000 customers in 40 countries around the globe, and the company has subsidiary companies in Great Britain, France and Sweden.

About LBIC - www.lbic.com 
The London BioScience Innovation Centre (LBIC) provides a focus for life sciences activity in the UK capital, offering laboratory and office facilities of an exceptionally high standard and a professional front door that cannot fail to impress. Owned by the prestigious Royal Veterinary College, LBIC is the first and only incubator for biotechnology companies in central London and is home to biotechnology and diagnostic companies, life science product and service providers, venture investors and small pharmaceutical companies. The centre benefits from shared networking space and meeting rooms and is in close proximity to the various financial services available throughout the Capital. LBIC is centrally located, just a ten minute walk from both Kings Cross and Euston mainline stations, next to the Royal Veterinary College.

Contact
GATC Biotech AG
Elke Decker
Jakob-Stadler-Platz 7
D-78467 Konstanz
Phone: +49 (0) 7531-816030
Fax: +49 (0) 7531-816081
e.decker@gatc-biotech.com

GATC Biotech Ltd.
London Laboratory
The London BioScience Innovation Centre
2 Royal College Street
London, NW1 0NH
Customer Service & Support:
Phone: 0207 691 4921