Company Announcements

Personal Genomics announced in April an exclusive sales alliance for Knome’s knoSYS platform in Italy.

Under a distribution agreement, Bina Technologies will include runtime licenses for Appistry’s Genome Analysis Toolkit and Cancer Genome Analysis Suite analysis tools as part of its Bina Analytical genomics platform.

First quarter Pacific Biosciences sales soared 108.7% to $11.6 million (see IBO 5/31/14), including 30.4% growth from the Roche agreement (see IBO 9/30/13). Product revenue grew 105.2% to account for 68% of sales due to the installation of nine PacBio RS II systems. The firm booked orders for nine systems for a total of 13 systems in backlog. Service and Other revenue improved 19.3% to make up 18%. The company raised its 2014 revenue growth outlook from 55% to roughly 70% to $47–$48 million.

In May, Rubicon Genomics named three new Chinese distributors: EMTD, RockGene BioTech and GeneOcean BioTech.

Omicia named Paul Billings, MD, PhD, as chief medical officer (CMO). Previously, Dr. Billings served as CMO at Life Technologies.

Bio-Rad Laboratories disclosed in its first quarter SEC 10-Q filing that it acquired GnuBIO (see IBO 4/15/14) for $40 million in cash. Contingent consideration related to certain milestones could total as much as $70 million.

Illumina named BaseHealth as its first EcoSystem Partner. Illumina’s products will power the patient genotyping and whole-genome sequencing functions of BaseHealth’s health-management platform, which integrates genomic and clinical data with behavioral analysis.

BaseHealth named Dr. Mostafa Ronaghi, chief technology officer at Illumina, to its Board in May.

VentureBeat reported in May that SolveBio, which provides an application-programming interface for accessing DNA reference data that it has organized and packaged, raised $2 million in seed funding.

Quantapore closed a Series B funding round of preferred stock financing, raising $35 million.

Product Introductions

Fluxion Biosciences introduced in April a series of assay kits for NGS that work with circulating tumor material enriched on its IsoFlux System.

GenoLogics Life Sciences Software released Clarity LIMS 3.0, which includes new features for reagent and lot management. Clarity LIMS Gold includes new features to support compliance standards for clinical genomics.

Illumina launched the VeriSeq PGS kit for preimplantation genetic screening of embryos using the NextSeq 500 and MiSeq sequencers. It complements its BlueGnome 24sure array-based assay, using the same sample preparation and BlueFuse software workflows.

In May, Lexogen opened its first US subsidiary in New Hampshire.