NuGEN Technologies, Inc., a leader in nucleic acid sample preparation announced today that it has hired Erwin V. Estigarribia to serve as the company’s vice president of operations reporting to Elizabeth Hutt, chief executive officer. Estigarribia will lead manufacturing and quality initiatives, and direct the company in achieving cGMP compliance by the end of 2009.

“Erwin’s experience in manufacturing sciences and product development in cGMP-compliant environments with novel processes makes him uniquely qualified to lead our regulatory initiatives,” noted Hutt. “NuGEN successfully earned its ISO 13485:2003 certification one year ago and is now working towards cGMP compliance. Together, these two qualifications will make NuGEN the partner of choice for pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies developing diagnostic assays, as well as for CLIA laboratories requiring rigorous quality standards.”

NuGEN’s commitment to delivering reagents manufactured under cGMP guidelines will enable its molecular diagnostic partners to more rapidly develop and commercialize genomics-based, clinical, molecular tests for diagnostic and prognostic applications. The company’s flagship Ovation® RNA Amplification Systems are specifically engineered to be fast, easy, and robust, with simple workflows as upfront sample preparation reagents for downstream microarray or q-PCR based genomic tests.

Estigarribia was most recently senior director, manufacturing sciences with the Geron Corporation. His responsibilities included supervision of a pilot plant facility, a drug delivery device laboratory, and a core cell culture facility. Prior to Geron, he was associate director, process development for Novartis Vaccines and Diagnostics (formerly Chiron), during which he supervised both cGMP- and ISO 13485-compliant manufacturing processes. Before Novartis, Estigarribia held a bioprocess consulting engineering position with PoroCrit and Sims SFE llc, as well as with Commonwealth Serum Laboratories (CSL, Ltd.).

Estigarribia received a bachelor of chemical and bioprocess engineering with honors from Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia.

About NuGEN

NuGEN Technologies, Inc.(www.nugeninc.com), based in San Carlos, CA, is focused on the development and commercialization of sensitive, rapid, and high-throughput amplification and sample preparation systems to enable the comprehensive analysis and discovery of biological mechanisms, cellular responses, and disease pathologies.

NuGEN, Ovation, SPIA, Ribo-SPIA, WT-Ovation, FL-Ovation, and Imagine More From Less are trademarks or registered trademarks of NuGEN Technologies, Inc. Other marks are the property of their respective owners.