Geneservice Announce the Appointment of Dr Andy Richards as Non-Executive Chairman

February 2^nd 2006, Geneservice Ltd (Cambridge, UK), announced today that the Board of Directors has appointed Dr Andy Richards as non-executive Chairman. Dr Richards is a well known Biotechnology entrepreneur having been a founder of several successful Cambridge biotechnology companies including Chiroscience, Arakis, Cambridge Biotechnology and Daniolabs.  He holds a number of non-executive director positions including Vectura group plc, Daniolabs, Biowisdom, Babraham Bioscience Technology and Cancer Research Technology (the commercial arm of CR-UK).  He is a director of the UK Bioindustry Association and this year was voted both Cambridge Evening News Businessman of the Year as well as one of the Top100 Living Contributors to Biotechnology.

This new appointment follows on from the successful management buyout of Geneservice from the UK MRC in August 2005.  On his appointment to the board of Geneservice Dr Richards said, “Geneservice have already demonstrated that they have real potential to develop into a major provider of specialist high quality contract research and reagents to the life sciences and rapidly growing biotechnology industry. The strong and committed team that led the management buyout have ambitious plans to grow Geneservice and I am delighted to have the opportunity to help them achieve this."

CEO of Geneservice Dr Tom Weaver added, “We are a young company and our aim was to bring in someone with extensive knowledge of biotechnology and experience with small startup companies.  Andy’s expertise and networking ability is exactly what we need at this stage of our development, plus he shares our vision to rapidly build up our product and service portfolio.  His infectious passion for innovation and getting the most out of our people, operations and business opportunities will add so much to our senior management team.” 

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Notes to editors

Geneservice Limited was launched in August 2005 following a successful management buyout of the UK Medical Research Council Biological Resource Centre (MRC geneservice).  GSL offers genomic products and expert contract research for applications in the life sciences and clinical research and development.  It provides access to high quality, leading edge genomic products essential for manipulating gene and protein function in the majority of model organisms, including Mouse and Man.  GSL also carries out expert technology support on a contract basis.  The management team comes with a proven track record at running a National Biological Resource Centre and a super-core laboratory, guaranteeing excellent customer service and access to a “one-stop-shop” for many genomic applications.  Our market has international reach with over 900 institutional customers from a database of 21,000 registered users from over 40 countries, and includes: Universities, Charities, Government labs, Biotech and Pharmaceutical companies. These attributes place GSL in a powerful and unique position to fully utilize the commercial potential of emerging genomic research in academia and translate these discoveries into validated, high quality, products and contract research. For more information about Geneservice Limited, its products and research support program log on to the website at www.geneservice.co.uk 

Contacts:

Tom Weaver , CEO

or

Roger Turner

Finance and Commercial Director

Geneservice Ltd
2 Cambridge Science Park
Milton Road
Cambridge
CB4 0FE
Telephone: +44(0)1223 432600
Fax: +44(0)1223 432601
E-mail: info@geneservice.co.uk