London, UK 10/18/18—Biotech company Amgen has made a $66 million equity investment in nanopore sequencing company Oxford Nanopore. deCODE Genetics, an Amgen subsidiary, uses Oxford Nanopore technologies for sequencing. “Oxford Nanopore’s long-read sequencing capability creates a window into parts of the genome that have been out of reach, as well as giving us a much better handle on structural variants that confer risk of a wide variety of diseases,” commented Kári Stefánsson, founder of deCODE Genetics, an Amgen company. “We have used Oxford Nanopore technology to sequence several hundred human genomes and continue to see the promise of this emerging technology.”

The investment is equivalent to a 3% share of the company, according to the Financial Times. The newspaper reported that deCODE Genetics utilizes Oxford Nanopore’s desktop PromethION system. The latest funding follows more than $100 million investments announced earlier this year (see IBO 3/31/18).