NEW YORK, Jan. 30-Cepheid will package and distribute a line of Takara Bio PCR reagents to be used with its SmartCycler and GeneXpert systems, the company said today.
In this agreement, Cepheid will be the exclusive distributor of Takara's OmniMix HS line in the U.S. and Canada and a non-exclusive distributor in Europe and other international markets. Takara Bio, which distributes Cepheid systems in the far East, will be the exclusive distributor of the reagents in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and China.
OmniMix HS is a dry-formulated version of Takara's Taq HS, optimized for use with Cepheid systems. The company plans to introduce one type of the reagent this month and launch the other when Cepheid's GeneXpert System is formally introduced in the third quarter of 2003.