Harvard Bioscience Announces Official Opening of its European Model Organism R&D Laboratory and Sales Office

Harvard Bioscience, Inc. (ticker: HBIO, exchange: NASDAQ) News Release - Sep-19-2001

HOLLISTON, Mass., and GEEL, Belgium, Sep 19, 2001 /PRNewswire/ -- Today Harvard Bioscience, Inc. (Nasdaq: HBIO) announced the official opening of its Union Biometrica European Model Organism R&D Laboratory and Sales Office in Geel, Belgium. This facility will perform customer driven R&D in both instrumentation and model organisms for drug development. Instrumentation development work will focus on high throughput analysis and imaging of model organisms expressing genes associated with human diseases. Model organism work will focus on developing strains of popular model organisms such as the fruit fly, D. melanogaster, the nematode, C. elegans, and the zebrafish, D. rerio for delivery to European based pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies and leading research universities.

The facility is led by Dr. Johan Geysen an accomplished scientist in the field of model organisms and the application of high throughput instrumentation for their analysis. Dr. Geysen was previously a principal scientist at the Janssen Research Foundation (JRF, a subsidiary of Johnson and Johnson) where he managed both instrumentation and therapeutic development projects. His responsibilities included managing collaborative partnerships with both industry and academia, such as The Sanger Centre, The Imperial Cancer Research Fund, DeVGen Inc., and Union Biometrica. Dr. Geysen led the JRF side of the collaborative research and development program with Union Biometrica for creating and screening transgenic model organisms. He has 17 publications and 3 patents to his name. In his new role, Dr. Geysen is supported by a team of scientists, sales, service and applications specialists. Many of the scientists have experience at the Janssen Research Foundation.

David Green, President of Harvard Bioscience commented: "We are very pleased to officially welcome Dr. Geysen and his team to Harvard Bioscience. JRF was closing its in house instrumentation development capacity and we took the initiative to hire most of this talented group. We now have a world class facility in Europe capable of developing both new instruments and new model organisms. This office will also serve as the base for our European sales, service and applications support team."

Dr. Geysen commented: "I believe that for the drug discovery company, 'simple' animals like C. elegans provide a novel fast track to in vivo compound screening on structurally and functionally conserved genes. A critical factor to the future success of this approach will be the implementation of technology that enables higher throughput in vivo compound screening and mechanism of action studies. The Union Biometrica COPAS platform is the first to deliver this capability."

About Harvard Bioscience Inc.

Harvard Bioscience is a global developer, manufacturer and marketer of innovative, enabling tools in drug discovery research at pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, universities and government laboratories. HBIO sells approximately 10,000 products to thousands of researchers in over 60 countries though its direct sales force, 1,000 page catalog, and through its distributors, the most notable of which is AP Biotech. HBIO has sales and manufacturing operations in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and Belgium with sales facilities in France and Canada. For more information please visit www.harvardbioscience.com or www.unionbio.com.

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