Company Announcements

In February, Silicon Biosystems Menarini and Macrogen partnered to develop clinical assays combining their respective digital sorting technology and NGS capabilities.

Sophia Genetics and Integrated DNA Technologies announced a strategic partnership, combining their respective DDM advanced analytical platform and xGene target enrichment panels to create NGS solutions for routine clinical diagnostics.

Biomedical data analysis firm Seven Bridges announced $45 million in Series A fundraising, led by Kryssen Capital.

Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles and Thermo Fisher Scientific announced an agreement to develop an NGS-based panel specifically designed for pediatric cancer research.

Genomics informatics company GenomeNext raised $1.2 million in seed financing, led by Hydra Capital and private investors.

In March, Omicia named Matt Tindall as CEO. He previously served as general manager of the Consumer Solutions division of IMS Health.

Product Introductions

In February, 10x Genomics introduced the Chromium System for parallel sample partitioning and molecular barcoding of samples prior to NGS. The company also launched three reagent kits: Chromium Single Cell 3’ for high-throughput digital gene expression on a cell-by-cell basis; Chromium Genome for long-range information on a genome-wide scale; and Chromium Exome, which provides long-range information for phasing, structural variant detection and copy number determination. The new Supernova Assembler enables low-cost, everyday diploid de novo assemblies.

BD introduced the BD CLiC System for cost effective, high-throughput, fully integrated NGS library preparation systems for targeted and whole genome library preparation. It can scale between 24 and 96 samples per run.

NuGEN Technologies released the Ovation SoLo RNA-Seq System, an end-to-end solution for whole transcriptome analyses starting directly from cells or isolated RNA.

PerkinElmer introduced the LabChip NGS 3K assay for quantitating DNA using very small concentrations of sample. It provides a high-throughput means to measure smear and fragment size distribution within the sample.

In March, Igenbio announced the expansion of its ERGO service offerings into the human genome analytics market, providing fully featured coding and noncoding gene expression analytics for RNASeq.

DNASTAR launched Lasergene 13 for RNA research on model and nonmodel organisms on standard desktop computers. Enhancements include the ability to perform de novo transcriptome assembly of RNA data for any size project.