Dear Howard, Please find some information on Boston Probes retrieved from the Danish largest stocks magazine "Børsen" (translation of the Danish text from "Børsen" dated November 6, 2001). One passage might be of special interest as Jes Østergaard, CEO of former DAKO A/S Copenhagen (now DAKO Cytomation A/S), says in this article: "With the sale of Boston Probes we are getting more close to the admission to the stock exchange, because with this deal we are able to 'hold our heads over the waterline' without to exceed our debit line given by our bank. If the market for biotech companies would have been explosive, it would have looked quite different, but now we have to calculate the situation." As can be read in this article, Boston Probes has been sold by DAKO Cytomation in 2001 to Applied Biosystems for DKK 300 million (ca. US-$ 32.8 million). A press release concerning this transaction also can be retrieved from the website of Applied Biosystems at : http://home.appliedbiosystems.com/corpcomm/applerapress.nsf/ABIDisplayPress/ 46364E611C5870AD88256C14007F39EB?OpenDocument&type=abi The press release starts with: "FOSTER CITY, CA and BEDFORD, MA -- November 5, 2001-- Applied Biosystems Group (NYSE:ABI), an Applera Corporation business, today announced that it has acquired Boston Probes, Inc., a privately-held company focused on development of peptide nucleic acid (PNA) probe technology. Applied Biosystems previously acquired 13 percent of Boston Probes in June 2000. In the agreement announced today, the company has acquired the remaining 87 percent of the outstanding shares of Boston Probes and all of the outstanding shares of PNA-Diagnostics A/S, a privately-held Danish company, for aggregate consideration of $32.8 million in cash. PNA-Diagnostics holds certain intellectual property rights related to peptide nucleic acids. Dako A/S, a Danish diagnostic company, previously owned PNA-Diagnostics and was the majority owner of Boston Probes..." Hoping to have put some light onto this matter. Roland Am 18.10.2002 3:04 Uhr schrieb Howard Shapiro unter hms@shapirolab.com : > > Belinda Ferrari, now in Denmark, is trying without success to find Boston > Probes, which has made PNA probes for microorganisms, etc. I also tried the > web site this evening and couldn't contact their server. However, a Google > search for Boston Probes brought up the following link: > http://www.appliedbiosystems.com/press_releases/license/ > which is a press release dated October 17, 2002, indicating that PE > Biosciences has just licensed PNA probes from Boston Probes,and also > mentioning that Boston Probes is an "affiliate", whatever that means, of > DAKO. However, Boston Probes can't be found on DAKO's web site, although > DAKO does sell some PNA probes. > Is something rotten in the State of Denmark? Is Boston Probes to be, or not > to be? Stay tuned. > > -Howard >
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