200 Instruments and 2 Million Biosensors Later...

It is with great pleasure that I am able to inform you that ForteBio has just achieved significant milestones in our company’s growth. We have shipped our 200th instrument and 2 millionth biosensor. These accomplishments have taken place in less than four years since we received our first Octet order in June, 2005. These milestones have occurred because of our commitment to a product leadership strategy and rapid product development, allowing us to produce three generations of the Octet in the past four years. Additionally we have taken steps over the past two years to offer access to the Octet via a global sales and customer support organization.

This past quarter we launched the third generation of our BLI-based Octet system. Our first generation Octet, the QK, introduced the benefits of label-free BLI technology versus its legacy predecessor, SPR. Protein quantitation, ease of use, reduced maintenance and 96-well throughput were the distinct advantages. The second generation Octet RED launched in March 2008 offered improved performance both in molecular weight sensitivity and reduced system noise and enabled small molecule drug discovery applications such as fragment screening. Our third generation 384 systems advance the platform further by offering automation friendliness and unattended operation in both 96- and 384-well plate formats.

We developed biosensor capability that allowed the first 2 million shipments based on achieving a basic set of chemistries. Our Protein A biosensor grew to be the most popular while our Streptavidin biosensors allowed you to customize your own capture chemistry requirements. The latest evolution in our biosensor solution has two components: offer biosensor pricing that allows you to broadly adopt the Octet, and, offer complete solution kits such as the Dip and Read Immunogenicity Assay Kit and a set of soon to be launched assay kits.

I have just returned from Europe, having visited scientists across four countries who were either using or are interested in the Octet platform. A common theme was that they were intrigued with the possibilities of our label-free BLI technology and they enjoyed the accessibility that ForteBio gives them to our organization. Many of them had just spoken to or had plans to speak to members of our customer support or product development teams.

We are a small company and I encourage you to take advantage of this. We are accessible and eager to hear your ideas for future BLI-based capabilities. We are quick to embrace an idea and develop it to commercial fruition.

In conclusion, I thank you for supporting ForteBio and for your interest in our products. My commitment to you is that we will continue to offer first or one-of-a-kind products in a timely manner. We will continue to be an organization that you can access – not just our sales and marketing team, but also our engineers and scientists. I want to thank all of our employees for the daily effort they put in to develop, build and support the products that all of you are counting on. I look forward to working with all of them to achieve the milestones that lie ahead of us.

 — Joseph D. Keegan, Ph.D., CEO