Wetzlar, Germany / St. Louis, MO, USA. Leica Microsystems announced that on May 14, 2008,

it acquired the assets of St. Louis, Missouri-based Coretech Holdings and McCormick

Scientific, LLC (Coretech), expanding its leading position in histopathology.

Coretech provides an extensive range of systems, instruments, reagents and consumables

for the clinical and research histology laboratory. Coretech is comprised of a suite of

strong brands including: McCormick Scientific, The Vibratome® Company, Paraplast® embedding

media, TurbOflow II® histology cassettes and myNeuroLab.com.

Coretech becomes a business unit within the Biosystems Division, and will be renamed

Leica Biosystems St. Louis, LLC.

Said Doug Martin, formerly CEO of Coretech Holdings, LLC and now Vice President & General

Manager of Leica Biosystems St. Louis, LLC, “The synergies created by combining the

Coretech products and team with those of Leica Microsystems are considerable. Both companies

will quickly leverage an improved product offering for our customers and expand our ability

to service the needs of our customers.”

“With this acquisition, Leica Microsystems continues to broaden and strengthen the product

line we offer our customers. The benefit to customers is that they now have a single partner

to come to for all their histology equipment, reagent and consumable needs. Having internal

research and development, as well as manufacturing capabilities for the instrument and their

associated reagents and consumables allows us to better optimize the entire system, leading

to higher quality and more consistent results for our customers,” says Anne De Greef-Safft,

President of Leica Microsystems’ Biosystems Division.

Leica Microsystems is a leading global designer and producer of innovative, high-tech,

precision optical systems for the analysis of microstructures. It is one of the market leaders

in each of its business areas: Microscopy, Confocal Laser Scanning Microscopy with corresponding

Imaging Systems, Specimen Preparation, and Medical Equipment. The company manufactures a broad

range of products for numerous applications requiring microscopic imaging, measurement, and

analysis. It also offers system solutions for life science including biotechnology and medicine,

research and development of raw materials, and industrial quality assurance. The company is

represented in over 100 countries with 9 manufacturing facilities in 7 countries, sales and

service organizations in 19 countries and an international network of dealers. The international

management is headquartered in Wetzlar, Germany.