Company Announcements

In March, QIAGEN signed a commercial agreement with GATC Biotech to provide GATC clients with full access to its Ingenuity Variant Analysis solution. The access includes interpretation services and direct access as a feature of GATC’s services.

In April, QIAGEN announced a reseller agreement with BGI to provide its Ingenuity Variant Analysis in integrated bioinformatics for all customers of BGI’s sequencing services.

As of April 15, Appistry began the process of returning commercial license options to the Broad Institute per the institution’s request.

In April, Congenica, a developer of the SAPIENTIA platform to screen whole-genome sequence data to identify novel genetic mutations and highlight those associated with inherited or acquired genetic disorders, raised an additional £2.2 million ($3.2 million) through the completion of a series A round of financing.

SoftGenetics incorporated customized analysis workflow templates into its NextGENe NGS software for users of RainDance Technologies’ ThunderBolts Cancer and Myeloid Panels.

AstraZeneca has become the first member of Bina Technologies’ Bina Alliance Program. AstraZeneca will utilize the Bina Genomic Management Solution as an enterprise platform to support its development work in oncology; cardiovascular and metabolic disease; and respiratory, inflammation and autoimmunity.

As part of a strategic alliance, WuXi NextCODE’s genomic database model, and clinical and research interfaces are now directly available on the DNAnexus cloud.

WaferGen Bio-systems announced a research collaboration with Genentech involving its SmartChip platform in single-cell sequencing.

Cypher Genomics announced a research project with the University of Pennsylvania funded by CurePSP to identify genetic factors in progressive supranuclear palsy.

Product Introductions

In March, Appistry released the GenomePilot application, with an expanded set of analysis tools and pipelines.

In April, BGI launched the cloud-based BGI Online, a one-stop solution for managing NGS projects. Using it, institutions of any size can build their own custom analysis tools with BGI’s open source software development kit.

RainDance Technologies introduced the ThunderBolts Myeloid Panel, an NGS assay for researching mutations and hotspots in 49 important genes in the causation, prognosis and recurrence of certain blood and bone marrow cancers.

Pacific Biosciences released new barcoding kits, allowing customers to pool many samples and enabling the flexibility to multiplex samples or targets within a sample, or a combination of both.