Invitrogen Awarded Food Safety Contract at 2008 Summer Olympic Games

Invitrogen Corporation (NASDAQ:IVGN), a provider of essential life science technologies for research, production and diagnostics, has been awarded a contract to provide kits for detecting possible E. coli O157 contamination in food at the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing, China. The monitoring program, based on World Health Organization food standards, is conducted by the Beijing Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Olympic Food Safety program.

E. coli 0157:H7 can produce a powerful toxin that can cause severe illness and even death in those who ingest it. Invitrogen's highly sensitive testing kits use Dynabeads(R) anti-E. coli O157 processes to capture the bacteria and reliably isolate the colonies from contaminated food for easy detection. China's National CDC has sponsored a food safety network for several years using Dynabeads(R) technology.

"Bacteria, particularly E. coli, can present a serious threat to public health at a major global event such as the Olympics," said Paul Kinnon, Vice President of Applied Market at Invitrogen. "Invitrogen's Dynabeads(R) are a reliable, accurate solution for keeping food safe from dangerous bacteria and a perfect example of how technologies developed to further basic research can also be used to protect what we eat and drink."

This contract represents the second time Invitrogen products have been selected for food and environmental safety testing in the Olympic Games. Invitrogen's PathAlert(TM) was selected to monitor Yersinia pestis, the causative agent of the plague, at the Torino Winter Games in 2006.

Source: Invitrogen Corporation