Venlo , The Netherlands and Hamburg , Germany – QIAGEN N.V. (NASDAQ: QGEN; Frankfurt , Prime Standard: QIA) and Eppendorf AG today announced that they have formed a strategic alliance that includes co-development and co-marketing of complementary and optimized products. The alliance is intended to link two of the strongest brands and product lines in the industry to ensure the highest compatibility of their products targeting the research, applied testing and molecular diagnostics.

In addition QIAGEN has acquired Eppendorf’s reagent business which includes the Eppendorf “5-Prime” nucleic acid sample preparation and PCR reagent product lines and related intellectual property. The acquired assets represent an attractive portfolio of preanalytical and nucleic acid amplification consumables as well as a very promising pipeline of proprietary technologies for nucleic acid handling, separation, purification and amplification. The assets add to QIAGEN’s core strategic focus. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. QIAGEN expects the business to add $6 million in net sales in 2006 and $11 million in 2007 and be slightly dilutive to earnings per share based on net income excluding acquisition and restructuring charges by $ 0.01 in 2006 and accretive to earnings per share based on net income excluding acquisition and restructuring charges by $ 0.01 in 2007. QIAGEN expects to incur one-time charges relating to the acquisition of approximately US$3 million in the fourth quarter 2005.