Minneapolis, Sept. 19, 2000 -- TECHNE Corporation (NASDAQ:TECH) announced today that it has filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota to dispute a $31.9 million invoice received from Amgen Inc., relating to the delivery of biological materials and arising out of a Supply Agreement.

Thomas E. Oland, TECHNE Chairman and CEO, made the following statement: “In 1991, TECHNE purchased two businesses and an inventory supply of Erythropoietin (EPO) from Amgen. For nine years thereafter, Amgen and TECHNE worked cooperatively. Recently, Amgen sent an invoice to TECHNE in which Amgen said that it had mistakenly failed to invoice TECHNE for EPO that had been supplied from time to time during the course of the nine-year relationship and that $31.9 million was due. TECHNE immediately responded that Amgen’s invoice was without merit and that there was nothing due to Amgen. TECHNE also pointed out to Amgen that Amgen hadn’t invoiced TECHNE for over nine years and during that nine-year period TECHNE had only sold $2.7 million in EPO biological-related products with the inventory supplied by Amgen. Further, the price that Amgen was invoicing for the EPO was substantially greater than any price that TECHNE would have been willing to pay had TECHNE been told of Amgen’s intentions to invoice.

“If Amgen believed that amounts were owing over the past nine years, it would have invoiced TECHNE in a timely manner. If Amgen had invoiced TECHNE in a timely, commercially reasonable manner or notified TECHNE of its intention to do so, TECHNE would have immediately stopped selling the modest amount of EPO-related products it was selling and promptly addressed the matter with Amgen. By not invoicing TECHNE in a timely and commercially reasonable manner or in a manner contemplated by our Agreements, Amgen deprived TECHNE of the opportunity to address this issue with Amgen in a timely fashion.

“Having reviewed this matter carefully, we believe that Amgen is not legally or contractually entitled to any payment as described in its invoice. We also believe that the payment requested by Amgen is inconsistent with the course of performance between the parties over the past nine years and violates standards of commercial reasonableness expected by and between merchants. Finally, from a practical, business standpoint, Amgen’s request for payment fails to meet the standard of everyday common sense. Amgen simply is not entitled to wait nine years to invoice someone, and it is ludicrous that TECHNE was expected to pay $31.9 million for EPO to support a product line that had generated only $2.7 million in sales over nine years.”

TECHNE’s management strongly believes that no material amount is owed to Amgen, that the matter be resolved favorably to TECHNE, and that the resolution of this matter will not have a material adverse effect on the financial condition or results of the operation of the Company.

TECHNE Corporation has two operating subsidiaries: Research and Diagnostic Systems, Inc. (R&D Systems) of Minneapolis, Minnesota and R&D Systems Europe, Ltd. (R&D Europe) of Abingdon, England. R&D Systems is a specialty manufacturer of biological products and R& Europe is a distributor of biotechnology products.