Roche Eyes New Sequencing Chemistry
This is Roche’s second investment related to nanopore sequencing this month. Last year, Illumina licensed nanopore technology created by a team from the University of Alabama and the University of Washington (see IBO 12/15/13). In May, Stratos raised $10.0 million in funding as part of a $16.3 million offering, according to an SEC filing. In total, the company has raised more than $20 million in funding.
Pleasanton, CA 6/26/14—Roche has made a strategic investment in Stratos Genomics and will collaborate with the company on research related to Stratos’s chemistry for single-molecule sequencing of DNA fragments using protein nanopores. The companies will work to develop efficient, low-cost sample preparation methods for DNA Xpandomers, a larger surrogate molecule, and to improve sequencing performance. Stratos’s Sequencing By Expansion method converts DNA into Xpandomers, which are 10–100 times larger than the original DNA, enhancing signal to noise. “The goal of our reach collaboration with Stratos Genomics and the recent acquisition of Genia [see IBO 6/15/14] is to capitalize on the promise of nanopore sequencing and put Roche on the path to introduce a potentially disruptive technology to the sequencing market,” stated Dan Zabrowski, head of Roche’s Sequencing Unit.
