Agilent Technologies and Partners HealthCare Announce Technology Supply Agreement for Mass General, Brigham and Women's Hospitals
PALO ALTO, Calif., and BOSTON, April 13, 2004 -- Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: A) and Partners HealthCare System today announced a one-year agreement for Agilent to provide microarray and gene expression products to Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH). Partners HealthCare is the parent organization for MGH and BWH, two of the leading academic medical centers in the United States. 

"Sequencing the human genome was just the beginning of a biological research revolution that has the power to transform drug research and improve the health of millions," said Barney Saunders, senior director of science and technology strategy for Agilent's Integrated Biology Solutions unit. "At any given time, only 10 to 30 percent of a cell's genes are expressed, or active. By using microarrays to compare which genes are overactive or underactive in diseased cells versus their healthy counterparts, researchers have the opportunity to identify early warning signs of disease, develop new therapeutics and better tailor treatments for individual patients."

"It is important to Partners HealthCare provide our researchers with access to new technologies for conducting research," said Raju Kucherlapati, Ph.D., scientific director of the Harvard Medical School - Partners HealthCare Center for Genetics and Genomics (HPCGG). "By having the latest technologies from companies like Agilent, we give our scientists the tools they need to find new treatments and cures for our patients."

Through this agreement, Agilent will supply HPCGG with gene expression instrumentation, including a scanner for analyzing microarrays and a bioanalyzer for evaluating sample quality. The agreement also determines pricing for Partners HealthCare's hospitals to purchase analytical tools and instruments from Agilent's Life Sciences and Chemical Analysis group, including liquid and gas chromatographs, mass spectrometers, microarrays, microfluidic devices and associated software, columns, reagents and supplies.

HPCGG provides research services to the greater Partners community. Members include Brigham and Women's/Faulkner Hospitals, MGH Institute of Health Professionals, McLean Hospital, Newton-Wellesley Hospital, North Shore Medical Center, Partners Community HealthCare Inc., Dana-Farber/Partners CancerCare and Harvard Clinical Research Institute.

Agilent Technologies is a leading provider of gene expression solutions with more than 400 customers worldwide. Agilent provides custom and catalog microarrays for the study of the following organisms: human, mouse, rat, yeast, rice, Magnaporthe grisea (rice blast) and Arabidopsis thaliana (model plant organism). Other Agilent gene expression products include a 48-slide high-throughput microarray scanner, feature extraction software, Rosetta gene-expression data analysis systems, the Agilent 2100 bioanalyzer with RNA LabChip kits for sample quality analysis and a range of reagents.


About Partners HealthCare

Partners HealthCare was founded in 1994 by Brigham and Women's Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital. Partners HealthCare is a leading Boston-based center for clinical research with more than 1,600 principal investigators and 1,000 clinical trials currently underway across the network. Partners is an integrated health care delivery system that offers patients throughout the region a continuum of coordinated high-quality care. The system includes primary care and specialty physicians, community hospitals, the two founding academic medical centers, specialty facilities, community health centers and other health-related entities. Partners HealthCare is a non-profit organization. Further information is available on the Web at www.partners.org .


About Agilent Technologies

Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: A) is a global technology leader in communications, electronics, life sciences and chemical analysis. The company's 28,000 employees serve customers in more than 110 countries. Agilent had net revenue of $6.1 billion in fiscal year 2003. Information about Agilent is available on the Web at www.agilent.com.


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CONTACT: Christina Maehr, Agilent Technologies, +1 408 553 7205, christina_maehr@agilent.com 
Jennifer Watson, Partners HealthCare, +1 617 278 1031, jwatson@partners.org