Marcy l'Etoile, France and Dublin, Ireland, December 10, 2008 bioMérieux, a world leader in the field of in vitro diagnostics, announced today the opening of an office in Dublin, Ireland to support its extensive Irish customer base of clinical, food and pharmaceutical laboratories. As part of its ongoing international development, the new office highlights bioMérieux’s commitment to Ireland.

The bioMérieux team will be located at NovaUCD, the Innovation and Technology Transfer Centre at University College Dublin. A great emphasis will be placed on training, making use of the University’s excellent conference and laboratory facilities. Drawing on the microbiology expertise available through the UCD Centre for Food Safety at the UCD Veterinary Sciences Centre, bioMérieux will provide training programmes, seminars and ‘hands-on’ workshops as part of its support to microbiologists throughout Ireland.

bioMérieux established a research collaboration 18 months ago with the internationally recognised UCD Centre for Food Safety, working on the neonatal pathogen Cronobacter sakazakii. The presence of this bacterium in infant food products, including powdered milk, can cause meningitis, sepsis and other serious infections, primarily in newborn or premature infants.

As part of the official office opening, bioMérieux held a series of parallel seminars for Irish customers at NovaUCD followed by a plenary session to introduce bioMérieux’s innovative microbial strain typing system, DiversiLab®.

ENDS

10 December 2008

For further information contact Micéal Whelan NovaUCD, e-mail: miceal.whelan@ucd.ie, tel: (01) 716 3712.

About bioMérieux

Advancing Diagnostics to Improve Public Health

A world leader in the field of in vitro diagnostics for 45 years, bioMérieux is present in more than 150 countries through 39 subsidiaries and a large network of distributors. In 2007, revenues reached €1.063 billion with 84% of sales outside of France.

bioMérieux provides diagnostic solutions (reagents, instruments, software) which determine the source of disease and contamination to improve patient health and ensure consumer safety. Its products are used for diagnosing infectious diseases and providing high medical value results for cardiovascular emergencies and cancer screening and monitoring. They are also used for detecting microorganisms in agri-food, pharmaceutical and cosmetic products. bioMérieux is listed on the NYSE Euronext Paris market (Code: BIM – Code ISIN: FR0010096479).

About NovaUCD

NovaUCD is University College Dublin’s €11 million Innovation and Technology Transfer Centre.  NovaUCD is responsible for the commercialisation of intellectual property arising from UCD research and for the development of co-operation with industry and business. NovaUCD has been funded through a unique public-private partnership that includes AIB Bank, Arthur Cox, Deloitte, Enterprise Ireland, Ericsson, Goodbody Stockbrokers, UCD and Xilinx.