Bioline Launches New EPIK™ miRNA Select Kits

CINCINNATI, March 03, 2016 -- Bioline, The PCR Company, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Meridian Bioscience, Inc. (NASDAQ:VIVO), is proud to announce the worldwide release of the EPIK™ miRNA Select Assays, developed for study of individual microRNA (miRNA) molecules. The EPIK miRNA Select Kits compliment the EPIK miRNA Panel Assays released at the end of 2015 and demonstrates the continued collaboration between MiRXES in Singapore and Bioline.  Recent studies continue to show the clinical value of individual miRNA molecules that are released from tissues and cells. The expression of certain individual miRNA molecules correlates with specific disease conditions making them promising biomarker candidates for the early detection of disease, prognosis, and monitoring of treatment.

These individual assays use the same novel approach developed by MiRXES for the panel assays, which employs miRNA specific reverse transcriptase primers and hemi-nested real-time PCR primers along with Bioline reverse transcriptase, SensiSMART™ with SYBR^®1 Green and highly optimized buffers. The resulting assays enable detection of extremely low levels of miRNA with very high specificity, allowing the discrimination between closely related miRNA sequences.

Marco Calzavara, President of Bioline commented, “I am very pleased to announce the release of the EPIK miRNA Select Kits, following the successful release of the EPIK miRNA Panels, this increases our portfolio of high quality miRNA kits, helping researchers with miRNA expression profiling, quantification and in biomarker discovery.”

Richard L. Eberly, President of Meridian Life Science, Inc., stated, “We remained committed to expanding the rapidly growing portfolio of highly specialized molecular biology products from Bioline. The release of the EPIK miRNA Select Assays and the enhanced performance are an important addition, as they provide another set of valuable research tools for our life science customers in creating more accurate and non-invasive molecular diagnostic assays.”

ABOUT MERIDIAN BIOSCIENCE, INC.

Meridian is a fully integrated life science company that develops, manufactures, markets and distributes a broad range of innovative diagnostic test kits, purified reagents and related products and offers biopharmaceutical enabling technologies. Utilizing a variety of methods, these products and diagnostic tests provide accuracy, simplicity and speed in the early diagnosis and treatment of common medical conditions, such as gastrointestinal, viral and respiratory infections. Meridian’s diagnostic products are used outside of the human body and require little or no special equipment. The Company's products are designed to enhance patient well-being while reducing the total outcome costs of healthcare. Meridian has strong market positions in the areas of gastrointestinal and upper respiratory infections, serology, parasitology and fungal disease diagnosis. In addition, Meridian is a supplier of rare reagents, specialty biologicals and related technologies used by biopharmaceutical companies engaged in research for new drugs and vaccines. The Company markets its products and technologies to hospitals, reference laboratories, research centers, diagnostics manufacturers and biotech companies in more than 70 countries around the world. The Company’s shares are traded on NASDAQ’s Global Select Market, symbol VIVO. Meridian's website address is www.meridianbioscience.com.

ADDITONAL INFORMATION

For more information about Bioline, please visit www.bioline.com
For more information about Meridian Life Science, Inc., please visit www.meridianlifescience.com
For more information about Meridian Bioscience, Inc., please visit www.meridianbioscience.com
Richard L. Eberly, [email protected]

¹ SBYR is a registered trademark of Life Technologies.

Contact: 513.271.3700
Richard L. Eberly