"We are very excited by these patent issuances from the U.S. Patent Office," said Thomas Klopack, Chief Executive Officer of ACLARA. "ACLARA has a large intellectual property portfolio. A growing component of this patent estate is related to our novel eTag technology on which we are building an exciting business focused on the discovery of biomarkers, the development of assays to support clinical trial programs, and ultimately diagnostic products and services, for targeted cancer therapies. Beyond specific eTag assays, our strategy is to extend our intellectual property to include novel biomarkers and their use in identifying patients more likely to respond to certain drugs. In addition we have a large collection of patents and patent applications covering different aspects of microfluidic and nanofluidic technologies. While we are not actively using these latter patents in our current operations, we believe they may find increasing application in future research and diagnostic processes performed at the "nano" scale."

ACLARA continually strives to strengthen and expand its large portfolio of patents and patent applications. ACLARA has 63 pending and issued U.S. patents related to the eTag technology and 71 pending and issued U.S. patents related to microfluidic and nanofluidic technologies, as well as a large number of international patent applications and patents.