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TWST: Shall we begin with a quick introduction and update on (NasdaqNM:QGENF)?

Mr. Colpan: QIAGEN is the leading provider of products for purification handling and analysis of genetic information, primarily DNA and RNA, which are the building blocks of the modern life science research. Having built a very large customer base in DNA and RNA purification, we are expanding our business into applications where purified DNA and RNA is used in combination with instrumentation in academic research, industrial research, and also in molecular diagnostics.

TWST: What are you seeing or hearing from your customers today? What is driving the demand, if you will, for your solutions?

Mr. Colpan: What we observe actually began to be visible 1½ years ago, after the whole human genome had been sequenced. There was a very big change in the direction of research going into functional genomics, which included the expression profiling on the R & D level as well as using protein information for genetic research. And we observed that the market for sequencing and sequence information was declining more and more.

TWST: What have you done to ensure you are well-positioned for such shifts?

Mr. Colpan: We are already very active in this market and fortunately enough we have the right products, further expanding our focus into the functional genomics area by offering our customers what they need to accomplish their daily projects and applications. I think more and more the market will be moving into integrated solutions for a complete application rather than a pure product sales approach.

TWST: Has the competitive environment changed?

Mr. Colpan: With applications becoming more and more complicated and samples getting more and more complex, I think today we are in a much more favorable situation than before. The competition is not disappearing, but it is less important than it was before. To purify DNA out of a bacterium, to be honest, is not a big challenge. But if you want to extract RNA from a tumor sample you immediately will be faced with a lot of technical hurdles to develop a robust and reliable product for this type of application. Developing products to extract any type of nucleic acids from any type of samples is QIAGEN’s strength and core competence and we definitely see little competition or alternatives in this area.

TWST: Can you walk us through the next 12 to 18 months and identify some of the key objectives you would like to achieve as a company?

Mr. Colpan: I think what we have to deliver to our customers is what I call integrated solutions or a complete application including instrumentation. In the past, we have been more of a product source company than today. In the last two years we have been developing more and more towards a whole solution selling company. I think this will continue to be the strategy going forward -- not just to sell a piece of steel or sell a reagent, but to combine it into a complete application.

TWST: Has that development required a restructuring and retraining of the sales force?

Mr. Colpan: I think for a few of our sales reps it is a retraining. They have to learn to sell a complete application. But the majority of our sales force has already been using this type of an approach. Plus, the sales force is in constant training in terms of product and application on the one hand, and in terms of behavior on the other hand. Certainly, having the QIAGEN brand, which is one of the most reputable brands in our industry with a very high customer loyalty, our sales force doesn’t really have to get in contact with our customers to maintain this very important relationship.

TWST: Do you see brand recognition and strength as a key competitive advantage in this space?

Mr. Colpan: Brand recognition and strength is one of the most important competitive advantages we have. QIAGEN owns one of the highest brand equities in the life science industry. As a tool provider you have to create a standard. The customer needs a product he can rely on, where he does not have to think about quality and reproducibility. In a whole experiment, the front-end preparation takes less than a percentage of the overall costs and researchers do not think about saving a dollar with front-end preparation if a consequence means the whole experiment could fail because the purified DNA was not as pure as it was needed.