Affymetrix, Inc. (NASDAQ: AFFX) and ScreenCell, a privately-held company, today announced the signing of a worldwide distribution agreement for ScreenCell’s isolation devices and dilution buffers,* designed for the collection of Circulating Tumor Cells (CTCs) in peripheral blood.

The agreement makes Affymetrix the exclusive distributor of ScreenCell® products* used in combination with in situ hybridization (ISH) assays, microarray assays, and other non-PCR based nucleic acid assays including Affymetrix’ industry-leading QuantiGene® ViewRNA Assays,* QuantiGene® Plex Assays,* and GeneChip® Microarray Assays.* The QuantiGene® ViewRNA CTC platform, consist of ScreenCell’s products and Affymetrix’ QuantiGene ViewRNA Assays, is now available from Affymetrix.

“This agreement is a powerful combination of two innovative technologies, one designed to isolate rare cells of potentially significant prognostic and predictive value in cancer, and another, our QuantiGene ViewRNA ISH Cell Assays, designed to detect single RNA transcripts in single CTCs and rare cells with high specificity,” stated George Bers, Vice President & General Manager, Expression Business Unit – Panomics for Affymetrix. “Today we are launching our CTC platform, which combines our highly sensitive and specific QuantiGene ViewRNA Assay with ScreenCell’s isolation devices. We believe this platform may potentially have a dramatic impact on disease detection, enabling researchers in translational sciences to further examine the impact on treatment, management and outcome in cancer. We are proud to be ScreenCell’s global partner and look forward to releasing additional assays and research applications.”

ScreenCell offers innovative, single-use devices to isolate by size and characterize a wide variety of tumor cells, both live and fixed, including mesenchymal cells, cancer stem cells, microembolii and cancer cells of non-epithelial origin. These cells, which are considered to be important in metastasis, are often not captured or cannot be sensitively detected through existing technologies that only target cells expressing EpCam, a transmembrane glycoprotein on epithelial cells. With the ScreenCell devices, collected cells are also well preserved morphologically and can be isolated and grown in culture for drug screening or further genomics analysis.

“Our goal in designing ScreenCell® technologies was to create a universal system, not limited to detection of cells of non-epithelial origin and free of any bias potentially linked to the use of antibodies for cell capture,” stated David Znaty, Chief Executive Officer of ScreenCell. “Our goal is to provide a technology to support further research for use in personalized medicine by creating a broadly accessible, non-invasive evaluation of specific, potential therapeutic targets. We are excited to work with Affymetrix not just for their commercial strength, but because we believe strongly in our combined technologies.”

* “For Research Use Only. Not for use in diagnostic procedures.”

PLEASE NOTE: Affymetrix®, the Affymetrix logo, GeneChip®, and QuantiGene® are registered trademarks of Affymetrix, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

About ScreenCell

ScreenCell was founded with the objective of designing and producing a simple but revolutionary technique allowing the fast and effective filtering of Rare Circulating Cells yielding high-quality CTC population amenable to better cellular and molecular characterization.

ScreenCell designed a full range of point of care devices for development for use in in vitro Diagnostics (IVD) assays and platforms.

ScreenCell is dedicated to creating technologies allowing CTCs to become potential end points in future oncology therapeutic arsenals by filtering out healthy live tumor cells, thus enabling:

. molecular biology

. cell culture

. enumeration and cytomorphology evaluation

For more information about ScreenCell, please visit www.screencell.com.

About Affymetrix

Affymetrix technology is used by the world's top pharmaceutical, diagnostic, and biotechnology companies, as well as leading academic, government, and nonprofit research institutes. More than 25,000 peer-reviewed papers have been published using the technology. Affymetrix is headquartered in Santa Clara, Calif., and has manufacturing facilities in Santa Clara, Cleveland, Ohio, and Singapore. The company has about 900 employees worldwide and maintains sales and distribution operations across Europe, Asia, and Latin America. For more information about Affymetrix, please visit www.affymetrix.com.

Forward-looking statements

All statements in this press release that are not historical are "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act as amended, including statements regarding Affymetrix' "expectations," "beliefs," "hopes," "intentions," "strategies" or the like. Such statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially for Affymetrix from those projected. These and other risk factors are discussed in Affymetrix' Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2011, and other SEC reports for subsequent quarterly periods.

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