Geneservice Ltd (GSL) of Cambridge England, and Kabushiki Kaisha DNAFORM, of Tokyo Japan, today announced exclusive distribution agreements whereby GSL and DNAFORM will jointly distribute FANTOM™ clones developed by RIKEN as well as other unique genomic resources created by leading international research institutions like the NIH. This strategic alliance will give the international life science community access to the world's largest collection of cDNA and genomic clone resources from key model organisms such as human, mouse, rat, primate, C. elegans, Drosophila, and Xenopus.

"We are excited at the prospect of Geneservice partnering with KK DNAFORM for the ability to combine our clone collections with the impressive resources from RIKEN, and expanding our territorial reach into Asia" said Tom Weaver, CEO for Geneservice.

KK DNAFORM, which is actively working on exploiting the RIKEN cDNA library technology, for which it holds exclusive patents, also welcomed this partnership. "We see this strategic alliance as a way to rapidly increase our product portfolio offered in Japan and other Asian countries, and to effectively market our RIKEN FANTOM™ Clones particularly in the EU" stressed Hirofumi Ujita, KK DNAFORM's CEO.

The new alliance was also welcomed by members of the research community, and recognized as a great step forward to increase the awareness about these clone collections in the public domain, and to make them more easily accessible for researches. Professor Yoshihide Hayashizaki, Project Director of the Genome Exploration Research Group at RIKEN, commented "This partnership is really very important to us, and we are hoping that it will give more researches access to our FANTOM™ Clones. Moreover, it is good to know that for the first time a clone provider in Japan will offer all the clones from the international genome projects." Marc Vidal from the DFCI added "The new paradigm of genomics and systems biology requires the creation of genome-wide clone resources. It is essential that international efforts like this take place to make such valuable resources available to the research community, in particular in Asia where a dedicated clone provider was missing."

Notes to editors
About Geneservice Limited. GSL is an innovative genomics-based products and contract research company recently formed from the UK Medical Research Council. Their mission is to provide an archiving and distribution portal for emerging genomic reagents, such as bacterial clones and Human DNA samples, generated by academic groups and consortia internationally. GSL also provides access to state-of-the-art high throughput technologies to academic and commercial clients for the study of gene expression and gene mapping, including disease gene identification, DNA sequencing, extraction and whole genome amplification; micro satellite and SNP genotyping; and RNA expression profiling. Geneservice's one-stop service program for genomics researchers is highly regarded for its quality and customer service. For more information please visit http://www.geneservice.co.uk/home/aboutus/index.jsp.

About DNAFORM. DNAFORM was established as a RIKEN Venture to commercialise technologies for the analysis of complex transcriptomes developed as part of the RIKEN Mouse Encyclopaedia Project. DNAFORM's technology platform is based on the patented RIKEN Full-Length cDNA Cloning Approach, which offers effective means for Transcriptome Analysis along with resources for target gene cloning. Expanding on this platform, novel approaches can be offered for Transcriptome Annotation based on 5'-Tag sequencing (CAGE), and the identification of genes regulated on the level of Alternative Splicing (ASSETS). In combination with our flexible Library Construction Program, the DNAFORM technology platform can support research and development in Proteomics, Gene Regulation, Gene Discovery, RNAi, or SNP Analysis. For the promotion of science and the easier availability of DNA clones to the research community, DNAFORM developed further together with RIKEN the concept of the DNABook™, which brings together clones of interest and the related information in a printed format easy to handle, store and use. For more information please visit http://www.dnaform.jp/index_e.html