Company Announcements

In July, investment-firm StoneCalibre acquired Edge Biosystems, a manufacturer and distributor of sample preparation and clean-up products for sequencing.

Pressure Bioscience entered into a strategic R&D agreement with Parabase Genomics to develop a sample preparation method for Parabase’s neonatal molecular diagnostics and newborn confirmatory-testing process.

Cypher Genomics announced a copromotion agreement with Illumina to offer drug firms, through Illumina’s sales force ,the NetBio platform for data analytics and storage, and its Coral biomarker-discovery service.

Advanced Biological Laboratories (ABL) and Roche Diagnostics extended their collaboration agreement to promote ABL’s DeepChek platform with Roche next-generation sequencing (NGS) systems for molecular virology. The agreement now includes HIV, and viral hepatitis B and C.

Second quarter Pacific Biosciences sales jumped 88.9% to $11.4 million, including $1.7 million or 28.0% growth from the Roche development agreement (see IBO 9/15/14). Product revenue rose 68.4% to make up 68% of sales, driven by the delivery of eight PacBio RS II systems. Five systems were booked, amounting to a backlog of 10 instruments. Service and Other revenue grew 36.8% to account for 15%.

In July, QIAGEN and BGI Tech Solutions entered into a distribution and service agreement for Greater China for QIAGEN’s Human Gene Mutation Database.

WaferGen Bio-systems announced a commercial partnership with Molecular Pathology Laboratory Network to develop NGS-based clinical tests.

In August, Oxford Nanopore Technologies raised £35 million ($58 million) in new funding via a private placement of ordinary shares. IP Group holds a 20% stake.

Station X added DNAnexus integration to its GenePool genome-analysis platform.

Product Introductions

Diagenode launched the Megaruptor DNA-fragmentation instrument for generating 2–75 kb fragments.

In August, Bioo Scientific introduced the NEXTflex Small RNA Sequencing Kit v2, which utilizes randomized adapters to reduce ligation bias.

Knome introduced knoSYS Informatics and Genomic Interpretation System Version 3, which can work independently of Knome hardware, and pay-as-you-go pricing.

Sales/Orders of Note

Illumina announced that it will work with Sidra Medical and Research Center and its Middle East partner, Alliance Global, to implement Sidra’s High-Throughput Genomics Center, which will undertake population studies. The Qatar-based facility will use Illumina’s HiSeq X Ten Sequencing System.