Cepheid Announces Symposium Speakers and Program Highlights for 19th European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ECCMID)

Test for Mycobacterium tuberculosis (TB) Expected to Highlight Broad On-Demand CE IVD Test Menu at Booth #611

Cepheid (Nasdaq: CPHD) today announced speaker and program highlights for its symposium, "Patient Management in the Era of Rapid Diagnostics," which the company will host at the 19th European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ECCMID), taking place in Finland next month. The company also announced the menu of CE IVD molecular diagnostic tests to be featured in booth #611 on the exhibition floor.

Dr. Fred Tenover, Ph.D., Cepheid's Senior Director of Scientific Affairs, will chair the symposium where leading microbiology and infection control specialists will present data on the clinical impact of rapid, on-demand molecular diagnostic testing.

The Cepheid Symposium, "Patient Management in the Era of Rapid Diagnostics," will take place at 9:00 a.m. on Sunday, 17 May in Hall 3F. The agenda is as follows:

9:00   MRSA in Paediatric Patients: What Rapid Testing Reveals
           Presented by Dr. Jim Gray, Senior Microbiologist, Birmingham
           Children's Hospital
    9:30   Detecting C. difficile: Slowly or Quickly?
           Presented by Professor Mark Wilcox, Professor in Medical
           Microbiology, Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Leeds
    10:00  Do We Need Rapid Tests to Detect Tuberculosis and Rifampicin
           Resistance?
           Presented by Dr. Sabine Ruesch-Gerdes, National Reference Centre
           for Mycobacteria, Borstel, Germany
    10:30  Will Community MRSA and C. difficile Change Infection Control in
           Hospitals?
           Presented by Dr. Fred Tenover, Cepheid, Sunnyvale, CA

"The 19th ECCMID Congress is shaping up to be extremely interesting in light of recent UK directives from the Department of Health concerning mandatory MRSA screening for all elective admissions and other developments in infection control across Europe," said Dr. David Persing, M.D., Ph.D., Cepheid's Chief Medical and Technology Officer. "Additionally, we expect to showcase our Xpert(R) MTB/RIF test for Mycobacterium tuberculosis - a product that, in my opinion, is one of the most important diagnostic developments to have occurred in many years."

Xpert MTB/RIF not only detects the presence of TB organism directly from sputum in less than two hours, but also identifies whether the strain is resistant to rifampicin, a commonly used first-line drug for treatment of the disease. Many studies have shown that rifampicin resistance is a reliable surrogate marker of strains that are multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB), and the frequency of MDR-TB is increasing in the EU. The test is expected to enable clinicians to dramatically improve the way they initially manage tuberculosis by helping them to make the right therapeutic decision on the first day of the initial patient encounter.

Cepheid currently offers European clinicians a broad menu of on-demand molecular diagnostic tests designed to enhance patient management. The full menu of CE IVD tests expected to be available for demonstration at booth #611 include:

- Xpert(R) MTB/RIF
     - Diagnostic test for the simultaneous detection of Mycobacterium
       tuberculosis and resistance to rifampicin

    - Xpert(R) C. difficile
     - Diagnostic test for Clostridium difficile infection

    - Xpert(R) vanA/vanB
     - Detection of vanA and vanB, the genes most associated with
       hospital-acquired vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE)

    - Xpert(R) MRSA
     - Surveillance test for nasal carriage of Methicillin-Resistant
       Staphylococcus aureus

    - Xpert(R) MRSA/SA BC
     - Diagnostic test for Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus and S.
       aureus in positive blood culture bottles

    - Xpert(R) MRSA/SA Nasal
     - Pre-Surgical Nasal Screening Test for Methicillin-Resistant
       Staphylococcus aureus and S. aureus

    - Xpert(R) MRSA/SA SSTI
     - Diagnostic test for Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus and S.
       aureus in skin and soft tissue

    - Xpert(R) EV
     - Diagnostic test for Enteroviral Meningitis

    - Xpert(R) GBS
     - Test for vaginal carriage of Group B Streptococcus

    - Xpert(R) BCR-ABL Monitor
     - Monitoring test for patients with Chronic Myeloid Leukaemia (CML)

Congress attendees can also look forward to a wide variety of insightful presentations, based on recent studies, highlighting the important role of molecular diagnostics. Presentations include:

- Dr. Beryl Oppenheim, Director of Infection Prevention and Control,
      Birmingham City Hospital: Comparison of the performance of four rapid
      tests against the gold standards of cytotoxicity assay and culture in
      the diagnosis of Clostridium difficile infection (CDI)

    - Dr. Kathleen Bamford, Reader and Honorary Consultant Medical
      Microbiologist, Imperial College, London: Evaluation of commercial
      toxin detection and two nucleic acid amplification tests for the
      routine detection of Clostridium difficile infection

    - Dr. Andrej Weintraub, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm:
      Comparison of a  multiplex real-time PCR and the cytotoxicity
      neutralization assay for the diagnosis of Clostridium difficile
      infections

    - Dr. Jim Gray, Senior Microbiologist, Birmingham Children's
      Hospital: Experience with polymerase chain reaction-based
      methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus screening in paediatrics

    - Dr. Paolo Cavallerio, Ospedale Molinette, Torino, Italy:
      Molecular assay for the rapid screening of methicillin-resistant S.
      aureus (MRSA) colonized patients in an Intensive Care Unit

    - Dr. Martin Jones, Cepheid, Sunnyvale, CA: Rapid detection of
      Mycobacterium tuberculosis and rifampicin-resistance from sputum
      samples with an easy-to-use PCR test system with near-patient
      capability

About Cepheid

Cepheid (Nasdaq: CPHD), based in Sunnyvale, Calif., is a molecular diagnostics company that develops, manufactures, and markets fully-integrated systems and tests for genetic analysis in the clinical, industrial and biothreat markets. The company's systems enable rapid, sophisticated genetic testing for organisms and genetic-based diseases by automating otherwise complex manual laboratory procedures. The company's easy-to-use systems integrate a number of complicated and time-intensive steps, including sample preparation, DNA amplification and detection, which enable the analysis of complex biological samples in its proprietary test cartridges. Through its strong molecular biology capabilities, the company is focusing on those applications where rapid molecular testing is particularly important, such as identifying infectious disease and cancer in the clinical market; food, agricultural, and environmental testing in the industrial market; and identifying bio-terrorism agents in the biothreat market. See www.cepheid.com for more information.

CONTACTS:
    For Media Inquiries:                   For Cepheid Investor Inquiries:
    Jared Tipton                           Jacquie Ross
    Cepheid Corporate Communications       Cepheid Investor Relations
    +1-408-400-8377                        +1-408-400-8329
    jared.tipton@cepheid.com               investor.relations@cepheid.com

media, Jared Tipton of Cepheid Corporate Communications, +1-408-400-8377,
jared.tipton@cepheid.com, or investors, Jacquie Ross of Cepheid Investor
Relations, +1-408-400-8329, investor.relations@cepheid.com

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