Company Announcements

10x Genomics announced in April that it is now a partner in the CanSeq 150 Initiative, a sequencing initiative led by Canada’s Genomics Enterprise that aims to sequencing 150 new genomes.

In April, Edico Genome named Premas Life Sciences as its sole distributor for India.

Thermo Fisher Scientific announced in April that an Exactis Innovation–led project to sequence cancer patients’ genomes to accelerate enrollment in clinical trial programs in Canada will standardize on its Oncomine assays and GeneStudio S5 Series systems. Up to two thousand samples are expected to be sequenced annually. The project will also use the company’s Oncomine Pan-Cancer Cell-Free, Oncomine Tumor Mutation Load and Oncomine Immune Response Research assays.

In May, Thermo Fisher Scientific entered into agreements with Daiichi Sankyo and Takeda Pharmaceuticals designed to expand the clinical utility of its Oncomine Dx Target Test in support of clinical trials and drug development. Thermo Fisher will retain global commercialization rights to the test and will lead all filings of supplemental premarket approvals.

OnRamp Bioinformatics and Advaita Bioinformatics announced in May the integration of their respective ROSALIND platform for analyzing raw genomic data and iPathwayGuide platform for advanced analytical methods.

In May, BGI announced a collaboration with Johns Hopkins University to study pancreatic cancer precision medicine, and build a genomic and immunogenomic database of pancreatic cancer and para-pancreatic malignancies. The company also announced the placement of its first BGISEQ sequencer in North America at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute of Sinai Health System in Toronto, Canada.

HTG Molecular Diagnostics entered into a license and supply agreement with Firalis, which will commercialize a NGS-based theranostic product and services to predict rheumatoid arthritis patients response to anti‐TNFα therapy, and other research products and services for mRNA profiling of inflammatory‐autoimmune disorders.

In May, HTG Diagnostics announced the termination of part of its agreement with QIAGEN related to the failure of a Pharma One project–related phase three drug trial.

In May, Luna DNA, which is the first genomic and medical research database owned by its community, announced that it raised a total of $4 million in funding. Investors include Illumina Ventures.

BC Platforms announced in May an agreement integrating its genomics and clinical data solutions with Sentieon’s NGS data processing software.

In May, BC Platforms partnered with GoogleCloud to support its DeepVariant platform.

SeqOnce Biosciences completed a $1 million series seed capital funding round in May, led by Mount Wilson Ventures, to support the commercialization of SeqOnce’s fast and simple library construction kit for whole-genome NGS.

In May, Seven Bridges was named a certified Google Cloud Technology Partner.

Swift Biosciences named Nathan Wood as CEO in May. Most recently, he served as president of SGI-DNA, a Synthetic Genomics company.

In May, Swift Biosciences partnered with Genomenon, a genomic literature search engine company, to comarket solutions in an integrated offering to make it easier to construct, validate and implement custom NGS assays as a follow-up to whole genome or exome sequencing studies, and dive deep into specific biological pathways.

In May, QIAGEN partnered with Freenome, an artificial intelligence genomics company, to accelerate the development of companion diagnostics for immuno-oncology, including development of QIAGEN’s next generation tumor mutational burden assay. The companies will comarket their products.

Product Introductions

In April, Mission Bio launched the Tapestri Single-Cell DNA Myeloid Pane, which targets SNVs and indels across 47 driver genes with relevant mutations; and the Single-Cell Tumor Hotspot Panel, which targets hotspots across 50 oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes relevant in a range of different solid tumors with SNV and indel mutation detection. In addition, new product updates to Tapestri make it compatible with the Illumina HiSeq 2500 for multiplexing multiple samples and larger panels.

BioBam launched in May its Blast2GO 5 platform for functional genomics analysis of newly sequenced organisms, featuring new visualization and workflow features.

In May, Bluebee debuted BLUEBASE, a bioinformatics platform aimed at processing, analyzing, sharing and storing genomics data.

SomaGenics released in May the RealSeq-biofluids library construction kit sensitive enough to detect small RNAs from cell-free biofluids.

Phase Genomics and Pacific Biosciences introduced in May the FALCON-Phase software as part of a new co-development effort to improve the FALCON-Unzip genome assembly method for providing high-quality, phased diploid genome assemblies. Using Phase Genomics’ genome scaffolding technologies and FALCON-Phase, maternal and paternal haplotypes can be separated or “phased” on a chromosomal scale.

Lexogen launched in May 96 i5 x 96 i7 Dual Indexing Barcodes and Unique Molecular Identifiers for enhanced indexing for RNA-Seq experiments.

Sales and Orders of Note

In April, Mission Bio announced that leading institutions including the NCI, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, MD Anderson Cancer Center, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, University of California–San Francisco, the University of Pennsylvania and Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have adapted its Tapestri platform for high-throughput single-cell DNA analysis.