LOUISVILLE, K.Y., May 19, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — Laboratory Supply
Company (LABSCO), the largest privately held supplier of diagnostic
instrumentation and clinical laboratory products to hospitals,
physician office laboratories, reference labs and other non-acute
care settings in the United States, announced today it has entered
into an agreement with Cepheid (NASDAQ:
CPHD) to become Cepheid’s exclusive distribution partner for
its GeneXpert® Systems and tests in the US acute care hospital
market for institutions with less than 150 beds. The
agreement also gives LABSCO non-exclusive rights to distribute
Cepheid’s products to all care settings in the non-hospital
market.
“We are very pleased to represent Cepheid’s GeneXpert®
Systems and tests as we feel that they represent the leading edge
in molecular diagnostics solutions,” said Steve Nielsen, LABSCO’s
Chairman and CEO. “We want to be the ‘go to company’ for
high-growth diagnostics systems manufacturers like Cepheid who want
to leverage our dedicated Diagnostics Systems Specialist team to
get to the segments of the market that they don’t serve directly.
We will continue to invest in this area and our objective is
to attract the finest sales talent in the industry,” added Nielsen.
“We believe that our focus on the small hospital, physician
office laboratory (POL) and other alternate care settings is
attractive to these manufacturers and unique in the industry.”
“There are more than 3900 US hospitals below 150 beds which have
not been a primary focus of Cepheid to date. The decision to engage
on a nationwide basis with LABSCO is in line with one of our
strategic growth objectives directed at expanding our reach within
the US market,” said Nico Arnold, Cepheid’s Executive Vice
President of Worldwide Commercial Operations. “We will continue to
focus our direct sales efforts on the approximate 210
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