Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE:A) and Applied Biosystems, part of Life Technologies Corp. (NASDAQ:LIFE), today introduced the Agilent SureSelect Target Enrichment System, which is optimized for the SOLiD™ System, a next-generation advanced genomic analysis sequencing platform. As part of the agreement, the companies are co-marketing the SureSelect system, which is a unique research tool for efficiently re-sequencing specific regions of interest in the genome. The tool saves researchers tremendous amounts of time and expense, often enabling them to conduct studies that would otherwise not be feasible.
In advance of the commercialization, the SureSelect Target Enrichment System was made available to a number of research scientists using the SOLiD System on an early-access basis, including Dr. John McPherson, Cancer Genomics director at the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR). Research scientists at OICR are using seven SOLiD Systems to identify genes critical to the development of cancer.
“In the course of our cancer research, we will target several genomic regions with the SureSelect solution for sequencing on the SOLiD platform,” McPherson said. “The combination of the SureSelect enrichment and the accuracy of the SOLiD System will enable us to cost-effectively assess genetic variation across multiple tumor samples.”
Agilent’s target-enrichment product line offers customer-specified mixtures of up to 55,000 biotinylated RNA probes, delivered in single tubes. The capture probes are 120 base pairs long, the longest currently on the market for this application. This makes them very effective at capturing DNA containing unknown mutations, such as single nucleotide polymorphisms, insertions or deletions. SureSelect products are packaged for a range of study sizes, from tens to thousands of samples, and are well-suited for automation in very-high-throughput workflows, unlike other commercially available products for this application.