New technologies will expand Circulomics’ sample preparation products to further enhance NGS data quality and yield

Baltimore, MD

NIH has awarded Circulomics two SBIR grants totaling over $1.7M to develop new applications of its Nanobind DNA/RNA extraction technology. Nanobind is a novel magnetic disk that contains a high density of micro- and nanostructured silica on the surface and that can be used for a wide variety of sample preparation applications. The nanostructured surface provides high capture efficiency, immense binding capacity, and protection from damage. Previous NIH grants have been used to develop kits for high molecular weight DNA extraction from cultured cells, bacteria, blood, and tissues.

The first award is a Phase I grant from the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) to develop Nanobind methods for tunable size selection purification in next-generation sequencing library preparation. Nanobind can be used for reaction cleanup to remove small background molecules such as adapters and primer dimers. However, Nanobind’s unique binding mechanism also allows it to perform tunable size selection of much larger library products to enhance sequencing read lengths. All Nanobind methods use a simple bind, wash, and elute process that features high purification and high recovery efficiencies.

The second award is a Phase II grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) to develop Nanobind methods that can obtain high quality DNA from formalin-fixed, paraffin embedded (FFPE) tissue samples and cytology samples. Phase I studies showed that Nanobind could obtain high quality DNA and RNA from a wide variety of clinical pathology samples. These studies further found that under specific conditions, Nanobind could uniquely obtain high molecular weight DNA (>100 kb) as well. Phase II work will focus on maturation of the Nanobind methods to further improve DNA and RNA quality. As part of this work, Circulomics will begin development of a new portfolio of assays to quantitatively assess DNA quality.

According to CEO Dr. Kelvin Liu, “We see great opportunity in new sample preparation, sequencing library preparation, and sample quality assays that can improve the yield and quality of next-generation sequencing data.”

These awards bring total funding to nearly $8M and drive the expansion of Circulomics’ growing portfolio of sample preparation technologies for genomics research and molecular diagnostics that include Nanobind nucleic acid purification, sample quality assays, and the PicoSep single molecule DNA sizing instrument.