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PHILADELPHIA, PA – August 10, 2006 – Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc. (NYSE: BIO and BIOb), a multinational manufacturer and distributor of life science research products and clinical diagnostics, today announced the release of version 7.5 of its award-winning KnowItAll Informatics System. The new release offers enhancements to many of the applications featured in prior versions of the KnowItAll platform and features a new edition of the software, the KnowItAll Informatics System – Metabolomics Edition for metabolomics research.

KnowItAll Informatics System – Metabolomics Edition:

• Integrates Infometrix' Pirouette^® chemometrics technology with Bio-Rad's award-winning KnowItAll platform, databases and NMR (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance) tools.
  
• Is the first end-to-end metabolomics research platform, providing spectral analysis and chemometrics tools in addition to links to metabolic pathways for metabolite/biomarker identification.
  
• The integration of these technologies allows researchers performing metabolic profiling studies to manage and analyze data easily in their search for relevant biomarkers. This capability is useful for distinguishing normal versus abnormal biological systems, response to drug treatment, and toxicological evaluation in disease treatments.

*Other features and enhancements of version 7.5 of the KnowItAll Informatics System:

• KnowItAll's AnalyzeIt MVP application now offers a peak alignment feature to adjust and correct unwanted spectral shifts prior to chemometric analysis.
• Bio-Rad's new IntelliBucket™ technology now offers customers a data binning approach based on Bio-Rad's patent-pending Overlap Density Heatmap technology, permitting flexible analysis of NMR spectra for optimal results.
• Researchers can now generate "trajectory" plots within the KnowItAll system. The trajectory maps the time course of a metabolic response or dosage response to a xenobiotic treatment.
• A new "Class Separation" feature provides a quantification of the degree of separation between different classes of objects in a Principal Component Analysis (PCA) study.
• Researchers can now use loadings plots derived from PCA studies performed using the KnowItAll system as a search query against a metabolite database in identifying potential biomarkers.
• A new "Stereo Viewing" data visualization tool for 3D structures and 3D data plots.
• Improved record and property handling for the MineIt data mining and database building application.
• Improvements to NMR pre-, post-, and batch processing of data, as well as a new peak picking algorithm are also included in this release.
• New report templates that allow researchers share their results/output for a typical NMR-based metabolomics experiment.
• A new database of ¹H and ¹³C NMR spectra of metabolites for identifying potential biomarkers of metabolomics experiments, generated from the BioMagResBank (BMRB), an online database hosted by the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
• A new technology for Maximum Common Substructure (MCS) analysis that generates a tabular list of all maximal common substructures found by the pair-wise comparison of all structures in the data set along with the total number of occurrences of that substructure in the entire data set. This technology allows easy visual assessment of the degree of structural similarity in a dataset and complement

Bio-Rad's patent-pending Overlap Density Heatmap technology, which allows easy visual assessment of the degree of spectral similarity in a dataset.

*Please note that the following features will vary depending on the KnowItAll Informatics System edition being used and the software options elected by the KnowItAll researcher

About Metabolomics

Metabolomics blends statistical analysis with analytical chemistry techniques such as nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), mass spectrometry (MS), and chromatography. This approach is poised to become a critical component of drug discovery and development, as well as a driver for faster and more accurate disease diagnostics and management.

About KnowItAll Informatics System

Bio-Rad's KnowItAll Informatics System is a fully integrated software and database package that provides scientific researchers multiple tools such as database building, management, search, analysis, prediction, structure drawing, and reporting all within a single user interface. Bio-Rad offers specialized "editions" of its KnowItAll system specifically customized for spectroscopic, chemistry, in silico ADME/Tox, and most recently, metabolomics research

About Bio-Rad's Informatics Division

Bio-Rad's Informatics Division (www.informatics.bio-rad.com) specializes in state-of-the-art software and database solutions for the pharmaceutical, biotech, and chemical industries. Bio-Rad is the leading publisher of fully verified spectral databases, cheminformatics, spectroscopy software and decision support systems for drug discovery. The company's award-winning KnowItAll Informatics System offers a fully integrated environment with flexible, expandable software and database solutions for spectroscopy (MS, NMR, IR, Raman, and spectral data management); cheminformatics; in silico ADME/Tox prediction; lead optimization; and metabolomics. For more information on the KnowItAll Informatics System, please visit www.knowitall.com; for more information on the Metabolomics Edition, please visit www.knowitall.com/metabolomics.

Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc., is a multinational manufacturer and distributor of life science research products and clinical diagnostics. Based in Hercules, California, Bio-Rad serves more than 70,000 research and industry customers worldwide through a network of more than 30 wholly owned subsidiary offices. For more information, visit www.bio-rad.com.

Various statements made within this press release may constitute "forward-looking statements" for purposes of the Securities and Exchange Commission's "safe harbor" provisions under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and Rule 3b-6 under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The forward-looking statements contained herein involve risks and uncertainties that could cause results to differ materially from the Company's expectations.

For more information contact:
Deborah Kernan, Marketing Communications Manager
Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc., Informatics Division
+1-215-349-7366
deborah_kernan@bio-rad.com