LinkMed creates a new company that acquires the sales rights of Olerup SSP’s products from Qiagen

LinkMed today announced the establishment of a new global distribution company, Olerup International AB, as well as the acquisition of the distribution rights for the Olerup SSP® product line from Qiagen GmbH. The transaction includes the takeover of Qiagen’s Austrian sales company. From July 1, 2009, the new company, Olerup International AB, owned in collaboration with Olle Olerup, will be responsible for sales of the Olerup SSP product line within HLA typing.

The acquisition and establishment of Olerup International AB was carried out to strengthen control and enhance profitability of Olerup SSP’s products, and to facilitate future distribution and sales of other products in this segment. The newly founded Olerup International AB will be owned 50 percent by LinkMed AB and 50 percent by Olle Olerup’s company SSP Primers AB. Olerup International AB is expected to generate revenues of approximately SEK 55 million in 2009. The acquisition includes inventory and other assets. ”We are very happy to be able to carry out this acquisition, thereby laying the next piece of the puzzle in building the company that we initiated with our acquisition of Olerup SSP last year. We will now able to substantially increase the profitability of these products. It also provides us with an excellent opportunity to handle distribution and sales of other products in this highly interesting niche market through the new company,” comments Ingemar Lagerlöf, CEO LinkMed. “And it feels great that we are able to do this in collaboration with Olle Olerup.” Under the terms of the transaction, the new company will take over the facilities and infrastructure associated with Olerup SSP product line, including an office in Wien, Austria. A number of employees that have managed the sales of Olerup SSP product line will remain in the acquired company. Olerup International AB will start two wholly-owned subsidiaries, Olerup GmbH with an office in Wien, and Olerup Inc. with an office in West Chester, PA, in the U.S. Olerup Inc. will manage sales in the North American region and Olerup GmbH will cover for sales in all other regions. Olerup Inc. will also take over sales of AbSorber’s cross match test XM-ONE® in North America. Initially the two companies will have a total of 12 employees. LinkMed acquired Olerup SSP AB from the founder Assistant Professor, Olle Olerup in July 2008. The company is world leading in the development of reagents and kits for genomic HLA typing, which is a required step performed prior to a transplantation operation in order to match the donor and recipient. HLA typing is primarily carried out before bone marrow transplantations (hematopoietic stem cell transplantation) but is also carried out in conjunction with solid organ transplantations (kidneys, lungs, hearts, etc). The better the match between donor and recipient, the lower the risk of transplantation-related complications. Genomic HLA typing is therefore a standard procedure prior to bone marrow transplantations. There are an infinite number of genomic variants, alleles, of HLA and new variants are identified continuously. Olerup SSP develops reagents and kits that are used for HLA typing according to the PCR SSP method (sequence specific primers), in which Olerup SSP is world leading. Olerup SSP has one of the most complete registers of reagents and kits now covering more than 3,000 identified HLA variants. The company is highly skilled in developing new reagents and kits as new genomic variants of HLA are identified. The transaction does not include Olerup SSP products that lie outside the transplantation segment, primarily products for pharmacogenetic applications. These products include typing for the alelle HLA-B* 5701, used to predict which AIDS patients are at risk for Abacavir hypersensitivity reactions. Qiagen took over distribution of Olerup SSP products in 2002, in conjunction with the acquisition of the Norwegian company GenoVision.