Tepnel lifted by sale of DNA purifier

Shares in UK company Tepnel Life Sciences closed up a massive 56 per cent to 17.4 pence yesterday after the company announced the first sale of its Nucleopure DNA purification system to an unnamed UK pharmaceuticals group after a period of in-house validation.

The new system, formerly known as the T2000, provides automation of Tepnel's Nucleon chemistry and will be used for the extraction, recovery and purification of high yields of highly intact genomic DNA from a range of tissues.

Tepnel said it expects further sales of the system over the next six months. Ben Matzilevich, the company's chief executive, said the deal would generate a significant ongoing revenue stream from reagents and other consumables required for the operation of the system.

Tepnel was formed in 1992 as a spin-out of the University of Manchester's Institute of Science and Technology and focuses on high-throughput automated DNA purification systems, manual DNA purification kits and reagents, as well as scientific services for nucleic acid purification, drug analysis, genotyping and genetically modified foods.