Sequencing
Company Announcements
In May, Illumina and PerkinElmer announced a joint effort to develop a standard and optimized NGS workflow protocol that enables critical metagenomics studies to be more performed more accurately. The companies have developed a scalable, high-quality automated sample-to-answer workflow solution for metagenomics profiling of human stool samples.
China-based OrigiMed announced in July an agreement with Illumina to develop and promote its advanced molecular clinical tumor applications based on Illumina’s NGS technologies.
In a June SEC filing, Foundation Medicine announced the amendment and restatement of its supply, service and support agreement with Illumina, extending the agreement to June 2023.
In July, BC Platform partnered with health care IT provider Tieto to advance precision medicine for Nordic health care providers. The companies work will together to develop solutions and engage in joint marketing efforts.
MGI, a subsidiary of BGI, announced in July that its MGISEQ-2000 and MGISEQ-200 sequencers received Medical Device Registration Certificates from the China Food and Drug Administration. In total, the company has obtained certification for four of its sequencing systems.
In July, Pacific Biosciences announced that a multi-institutional consortium of maize researchers is using its Sequel System to create a 26-line pangenome reference collection as part of the NIH-funded $2.8 million Plant Genome Research Project. BioNano Genomics’ optical mapping technology is also being used in the Project.
Quantapore, developer of an ultra-low-cost nanopore DNA sequencing platform, closed a Series 3 financing round in July. The round, led by Northern Light Venture Capital, Tsingyuan Ventures and Sangel Venture Capital, will to be used to fund the launch of a beta product.
Under an agreement announced in July with Enzyvant, a biopharmaceutical firm developing treatments for people with rare diseases, PerkinElmer Genomics will leverage its network of global labs and testing platforms to offer eligible providers and patients access to collection packs for patient sample intake in order to screen for mutations in the ASAH1 gene. Mutations in ASAH1 typically manifest as Farber disease, a rare lysosomal storage disorder that causes a wide range of symptoms throughout the body.
In July, Lifebit closed a $3 million seed funding round led by Pentech and Connect Ventures.
Pacific Biosciences announced in July the appointment of Christian Henry to its Board. Most recently, he served as executive vice president & chief commercial officer at Illumina.
In July, 10x Genomics announced that BioLegend and Immudex will be the first 10x Compatible Partners providing products for its new single-cell Feature Barcoding Technology. The resulting product innovations, available at the end of 2018, will enable simultaneous gene and protein expression of the same cell, as well as cellular characterizations and mapping responses. The new products offered by BioLegend, TotalSeq B and TotalSeq C, will be fully compatible with 10x Genomics’ Chromium Single Cell Gene Expression Solution or Single Cell Immune Profiling Solution with Feature Barcoding Technology. Using the 10x Chromium Single Cell Immune Profiling Solution with new Feature Barcoding Technology and Immudex DNA barcoded MHC-peptide multimers, researchers will be able to link full-length, paired TCR alpha and beta chain sequences and transcriptional profiles to the identity of their target antigens in the same cells with high specificity and sensitivity.
Product Introductions
In June, BioDiscovery released Nexus Copy Number 10.0, calling it a single solution for copy number estimation from arrays, WES, WGS, and shallow and targeted sequencing. The software is capable of both copy number calling and downstream statistical analyses. Features include the export of the distance matrix for clustering, user-specified event colors, and plotting of BAF (Ballele frequency) for the BAM ngCGH (matched) algorithm.
In July, New England Biolabs launched its NEBNext Direct Custom Ready Panels, which employ its NEBNext Direct target enrichment technology. The Panels utilize a library of ~850 pre-synthesized gene targets.
In July, Lifebit launched its first product, Deploit, calling it the world’s first AI-powered genomic data analysis platform. The platform integrates with all major cloud providers and features a high level of automation.
Sales and Orders of Note
In July, SOPHiA GENETICS announced that 3 new healthcare institution in Brazil have adopted its SOPHiA AI Hereditary Cancer Solution for clinical NGS data analysis, bringing its total number of customers in the country to 10. The new customers are genomics lab GeneOne, the Hospital de Amor and the 2018 TechEmerge Project.
