Sigma^® Life Science, a division of Sigma-Aldrich^® Corporation and a leading European manufacturer of oligonucleotides, has signed a three-year contract with Research Councils UK (RCUK) Shared Services Centre Limited to be a prefered supplier for synthetic oligonucleotides.

With more than 20 years of experience in oligonucleotide synthesis, Sigma Life Science offers a broad commercially available range of high quality oligonucleotide modifications, purifications, synthesis scales and qPCR probes. The Company has a UK production facility in Haverhill, near Cambridge, that enables faster and more efficient delivery of products to UK customers. Combined with Sigma's globally renowned technical support and customer service, the Company's productation capabilities have enabled Sigma Life Science to become the UK's leading oligonucleotide supplier.

Michael Harris, Managing Director of Europe, Middle East, Africa regions for Sigma-Aldrich, commented: "Sigma Life Science has been a preferred oligonucleotide supplier to the Medical Research Council (one of the UK's seven Research Councils) for over four years, and we are delighted that the quality of our products and service has resulted in the expansion of this contract. This new agreement is expected to enable additional RCUK researchers to access Sigma's products, as well as allow Sigma Life Science to consolidate its relationship with RCUK."

Sigma Life Science provides a wide range of other molecular biology reagents, including nucleic acid amplification and purification reagents, RNAi products (including shRNA, siRNA and the innovative ZFN technology) and more than 38,000 antibodies. For more information on the complete range of Sigma Life Science products, please visit www.wherebiobegins.com

Cautionary statement: The foregoing release contains forward-looking statements that can be identified by terminology such as "expected to enable" or similar expressions, or by expressed or implied discussions regarding potential future revenues from oligonucleotides. You should not place undue reliance on these statements. Such forward-looking statements reflect the current views of management regarding future events, and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such statements. There can be no guarantee that the supplier agreement will continue to meet the demands of the marketplace. Nor can there be any guarantee that any of the products from the supplier agreement will achieve any particular levels of revenue in the future. In particular, management's expectations regarding the supplier agreement could be affected by, among other things, unexpected regulatory actions or delays or government regulation generally; the Company's ability to obtain or maintain patent or other proprietary intellectual property protection; competition in general; government, industry and general public pricing pressures; the impact that the foregoing factors could have on the values attributed to the Company's assets and liabilities as recorded in its consolidated balance sheet, and other risks and factors referred to in Sigma-Aldrich's current Form 10-K on file with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those anticipated, believed, estimated or expected. Sigma-Aldrich is providing the information in this press release as of this date and does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements contained in this press release as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.