Company Announcements

In October 2013, Roche certified the University of Liverpool’s Centre for Genomic Research as a provider of Roche NimbleGen SeqCap EZ Services.

Knome raised $5.8 million in a debt offering, according to an October 2013 SEC filing.

In November 2013, Maverix Biomics announced a strategic comarketing agreement with QIAGEN to streamline the interpretation of raw next generation sequencing (NGS) data, providing easy three-step, push-button data analysis, which will be integrated with QIAGEN’s Ingenuity iReport biological data interpretation solution.

GenapSys raised $37 million in Series B financing to commercialize its GENIUS (Gene Electronic Nano-integrated Ultra-sensitive) 110 sequencing system.

Oxford Nanopore announced that Illumina’s 13.5% shareholding in the company was acquired by other investors for £56.4 million ($91.1 million). Illumina recorded a $55.2 million gain and stated that its commercialization agreement with Oxford Nanopore still remains in place.

Product Introductions

Clontech Laboratories released in October the SMARTer Stranded RNA-Seq Kit for strand-specific RNA-Seq from low input RNA samples.

In October, Agilent Technologies introduced a SureSelect target enrichment solution for the Ion Proton.

BioDatomic launched BioDT, an open-source suite of NGS data analysis software and services.

Integrated DNA Technologies released the xGen Acute Myeloid Leukemia Cancer Panel v1.0 for target enrichment, which consists of 11,473 xGen Lockdown Probes.

Life Technologies announced four new European members of its Ion AmpliSeq Exome Certified Service Provider Program.

In November 2013, Swift Biosciences released the Accel-NGS PCR-free DNA Library Kit for Illumina NGS systems.

Illumina’s MiSeqDx system, MiSeqDx Cystic Fibrosis 139-Variant Assay, MiSeqDx Cystic Fibrosis Clinical Sequencing Assay and MiSeqDx Universal Kit received FDA clearance in November 2013.

Roche released SeqCap EZ Exome Designs for target enrichment of the wheat, barley and maize genomes.

Sales/Orders of Note

In October 2013, Life Technologies announced the purchase of 37 Ion Proton sequencers by BGI and that BGI signed a supply and licensing agreement.

In October 2013, the Department of Veterans Affairs awarded Claritas Genomics, Life Technologies and Lockheed Martin a $9 million contract for exome sequencing of veterans. Claritas is supported by Life and its Ion Proton technology.