Company Announcements

Human Longevity (HLI) announced in April a 10-year agreement with AstraZeneca to sequence and analyze up to 500,000 DNA samples from clinical samples. The insights will be added to HLI’s Knowledgebase.

Takara Bio USA and Integrated DNA Technologies announced a collaboration to support low-input targeted RNA sequencing.

TATAA Biocenter agreed to distribute Lexogen’s NGS library construction kits in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Germany, Austria, France, Luxemburg, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.

Pacific Biosciences and Advanced Analytical Technologies (AATI) announced in April a comarketing agreement for Pacific Biosciences’ PacBio RS II and Sequel Systems, and AATI’s Fragment Analyzer to streamline large-insert library workflow for de novo assemblies.

HTG Molecular Diagnostics named Donnie (Don) M. Hardison to its Board in May. Most recently, he served as president and CEO of Good Start Genetics.

HTG Molecular Diagnostics announced a research collaboration agreement with Bristol-Myers Squibb to evaluate the potential for immune-oncology molecular profiling in multiple tumor types.

Kapa Biosystems’ NGS sample preparation products are now directly available from Roche Diagnostics Canada, in addition to D-Mark Biosciences.

Illumina received a product approval certificate for its MiSeqDx Instrument and Universal Kit with South Korea’s Ministry of Food and Drug Safety.

10X Genomics entered into distribution agreements with MDxK for South Korea, Millennium Science for Australia and New Zealand, Research Instruments for Southeast Asia and Star Research Technology for China.

BGI and the University of Washington School of Medicine signed a memorandum to collaborate on precision medicine development.

Appistry entered into a partnership with Washington University in St. Louis under which it will integrate the VarScan software for variant detection in massively parallel sequencing data with its GenomePilot solution.

Product Introductions

In May, Thermo Fisher Scientific launched the Applied Biosystems Precision ID NGS System for forensic analysis of degraded or limited DNA samples. Five panels are available: the Precision ID GlobalFiler NGS STR Panel, which analyzes 33 targets; the Precision ID mtDNA Whole Genome Panel; the Precision ID mtDNA Control Region Panel; the Precision ID Identity Panel, comprised of 124 SNP markers; and the Precision ID Ancestry Panel, comprised of 165 SNP markers.

Huawei and WuXi AppTec launched the China Precision Medicine Cloud, a national-scale cloud infrastructure to serve the China Precision Medicine Initiative.