Takara Bio USA Holdings, Inc. completes acquisition of WaferGen Bio-systems, Inc.

Mountain View, CA—March 1, 2017—Takara Bio USA Holdings, Inc. ("TBUSH") announced that it has completed the acquisition of WaferGen Bio-systems, Inc. ("WaferGen"), WaferGen has become a wholly owned subsidiary of TBUSH as of February 28, 2017 (US local time).

Under the merger agreement executed with WaferGen, TBUSH paid 35.9 million US dollars to acquire 100% of the equity in WaferGen. TBUSH is a wholly owned subsidiary of Takara Bio Inc. ("Takara Bio"), a leading global biotechnology and life science company headquartered in Shiga, Japan. Takara Bio USA, Inc. ("TBUSA") is a wholly owned subsidiary of TBUSH, and both TBUSA and TBUSH are part of the global Takara Bio Group. The impact of the acquisition on Takara Bio Inc.'s financial results in 2017 will be immaterial.

The Takara Bio Group provides a wide range of life science products and services under the Takara, Clontech, and Cellartis brands that assist discovery, translational, and clinical scientists in the advancement of their work. The WaferGen acquisition will allow the Takara Bio Group to augment and expand its worldwide commercial offerings in transcriptomics and create new market opportunities in other area of genomics.

"We are pleased to announce the completion of this transaction and officially welcome WaferGen to the Takara Bio Group," said Carol Lou, President, TBUSA. "We are excited about the synergy between WaferGen's technologies and products for isolation and processing of single cells and our RNA-seq and T-Cell Receptor (TCR) profiling technologies. WaferGen's technologies are highly complementary to our reagent portfolio and the combination presents new opportunities for us in genetic analysis including clinical and applied markets."

Recently (January 2017), TBUSH announced the acquisition of Rubicon Genomics, Inc. The combined acquisitions of WaferGen and Rubicon Genomics are synergistic and will allow the Takara Bio Group to provide the exciting benefits of the combined portfolios to the life science community.

Advisors

GCA Advisors, LLC was exclusive financial advisor to TBUSH and Torreya Partners, LLC was exclusive financial advisor to WaferGen. Morrison & Foerster LLP acted as legal counsel to TBUSH while K&L Gates LLP acted as legal counsel for WaferGen.

About Takara Bio, Inc.

Takara Bio Inc. is an innovative biotechnology company based in Shiga, Japan. As a world leader in biotechnology research and development, Takara Bio was the first company to market PCR technology in Japan and is also the developer of the RetroNectin reagent, which is used as a world standard in gene therapy protocols. In addition to providing research reagents and equipment to the life science research market, Takara Bio has active research and product development activities in the fields of gene and cell-based therapy and agricultural biotechnology; and is committed to preventing disease and improving the quality of life for all people through the use of biotechnology. Through strategic alliances with other industry leaders, Takara Bio aims to extend its reach around the world. More information is available at takara-bio.com.

About Takara Bio USA, Inc.

Takara Bio USA, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Takara Bio Inc., develops, manufactures, and distributes a wide range of life science research reagents under the Takara, Clontech and Cellartis brands. Key products include SMARTer cDNA synthesis kits for a variety of samples and applications, including NGS; high-performance qPCR and PCR reagents (including the Takara Ex Taq, Takara LA Taq, Titanium, and Advantage enzymes); Cellartis stem cells and stem cell reagents; RT enzymes and SMART library construction kits; the innovative In-Fusion cloning system; Guide-it gene editing tools; Tet-based inducible gene expression systems; and Living Colors fluorescent proteins. These and other products support applications including NGS; gene discovery, regulation, and function studies; protein expression and purification; gene editing and stem cell studies; and plant and food research. For more information, visit takarabio.com.

About WaferGen Bio-systems, Inc.

WaferGen Bio-systems, Inc. is a biotechnology company that offers innovative genomic technology solutions for single-cell analysis and clinical research. The ICELL8 Single-Cell System is a first of its kind system that can isolate thousands of single cells and processes specific cells for analysis, including Next Generation Sequencing. The system has demonstrated unbiased isolation of single cells from solid tumors, brain cells, pulmonary airway cells, and multiple cell lines. The SmartChip platform can be used for profiling and validating molecular biomarkers, and can perform massively parallel singleplex PCR for one-step target enrichment and library preparation for clinical NGS. The Apollo 324 system can be used to process DNA and RNA from clinical samples to next generation sequencing ready libraries. These technologies offer a powerful set of tools for biological analysis at the molecular and single-cell level in the life sciences, pharmaceutical, and clinical laboratory industries.

For more information: Corporate Communications, Takara Bio Inc.
E-mail: bio-ir@takara-bio.co.jp

This article is translated from a press release in Japanese for your convenience.