Nanogen Inc announced that it has been awarded two additional United States patents relating to its electronic microarray technology. US Patent No. 6,068,818, entitled "Multicomponent Devices For Molecular Biological Analysis and Diagnostics" and US Patent No. 6,071,394 entitled "Channel-Less Separation of Bioparticles On A Bioelectronic Chip By Dielectrophoresis" are the sixteenth and seventeenth US patents issued to the company.

"U.S. Patent 6,071,394 claims important aspects of electronic sample-to-answer integration," commented Dr. James P. O 'Connell, Vice President of Science & Technology at Nanogen. "The apparatus and methods described in the '394 Patent permit the separation of a mixture of cellular materials in a sample using an electronic separation technique known as dielectrophoresis through a channel-less flow chamber. Once the relevant materials are separated, the cells can be moved electronically to a bio-electronic chip where the cells can be lysed and the genetic contents further processed and analyzed. In certain embodiments, the patent describes the use of two separate arrays linked electronically. The first array operates to achieve cell separation and cell processing and the second array is used for DNA hybridization or immunoassay applications."

"In addition, we have also been awarded U.S. Patent No. 6,068,818 which covers a variety of electronic devices and components for performing electronically-controlled biological operations," Dr. O'Connell continued. "High reliability interconnections are of critical importance in electronic manufacturing. As an electronic device, the NanoChip electronic microchip array requires electrical connection to various substrates, which in turn are electrically connected to the NanoChip Molecular Biology Workstation. The '818 Patent describes the use of certain cost-effective substrates and interconnect processes that may further enhance our ability to meet our customers' high requirements for quality and accuracy."

The first commercial sale of the Company's flagship product, the NanoChip Molecular Biology Workstation, was announced earlier this week.

Dr. O'Connell concluded, "The '394 and '818 patents represent important additions to our growing intellectual property portfolio. Our objective is to provide our customers with advanced, easy to use and highly accurate analysis systems. The advances represented by these most recent patents will help us to achieve this objective."

Nanogen recently began marketing its NanoChip Molecular Biology Workstation to scientists and genomics laboratories setting new standards for SNP scoring. In beta testing, the NanoChip(TM) system has been shown to provide accuracy equal to or better than DNA sequencing and other methods for SNP confirmation.

Unlike other systems, the NanoChip system uses electronically accelerated hybridization under very low salt conditions, potentially avoiding problems with DNA conformation and secondary structures, whereas most sequencing and primer extension technologies require high salt conditions.