Acacia Research Corporation announced that its CombiMatrix group has entered into a manufacturing-and-distribution agreement with Macrogen, Inc. The agreement establishes Macrogen as a key distributor and enables Macrogen, through use of CustomArray Synthesizers that it has purchased, to synthesize content onto CustomArrays for distribution in Korea and to offer CustomArray-based services.

CombiMatrix's strategy for the research and development market is to establish manufacturing and distribution relationships with regional companies to enable them to manufacture arrays onsite for their local markets. Each new partner is required to purchase a number of CustomArray Synthesizers. CombiMatrix benefits by the sales of its products and by expanding the commercial market for its products without having to build additional infrastructure. CombiMatrix will continue to sell blank CustomArrays, reagents, additional synthesizers, and equipment to the partner for its local customers. CombiMatrix's proprietary semiconductor technology enables the execution of this business strategy. Other major array manufacturers are not able to execute this business strategy since their manufacturing methods do not enable distributed manufacturing.

"Macrogen has been partnering with the world's leading biotechnology companies and organizations to become the powerhouse of revolutionizing research in Asia. In Korea, we have been very fortunate to lead this effort by utilizing our core technologies in sequencing, microarrays, especially in array CGH, and mouse models to study human diseases. I am personally very excited to be an exclusive manufacturer and distributor in Korea and a global service provider of CombiMatrix, of which in my mind is the most exciting microarray technology yet to be commercialized in the world," said Byung-Hwa Lee, CEO of Macrogen. "The main strength of CombiMatrix's technology is its flexible and easy to use platform that allows a rapid adaptation of new biological contents to be diagnosed within days instead of months. This kind of plasticity was missing until now in all other microarray technologies, and working with CombiMatrix will enable Macrogen to better position itself as a leader in diagnostic microarray market," said Dr. Jason Kang, CTO of Macrogen.

"Our strategy for the research and development market of establishing partners that purchase instruments for the manufacturing and distribution of CustomArrays is growing," said Dr. Amit Kumar, president and CEO of CombiMatrix. "Macrogen has great expertise in Korea and around the world, and it has great expertise in a wide variety of areas, including arrays, array services, and bioinformatics. I also very much like that Macrogen is an aggressive company, working intelligently and aggressively to expand its markets and its offerings. We and Macrogen view the growing role of microarrays in the world -- in R&D, infectious-disease monitoring and tracking, and diagnostics -- as one of enormous opportunity."