Correlagen to use Helicos Genetic Analysis System for diagnosing genetic disorders

Correlagen Diagnostics Inc., a leading provider of genetic testing for disease diagnosis, today announced the acquisition of a system from and a scientific collaboration with Helicos BioSciences Corporation (NASDAQ: HLCS).

“We believe that the Helicos® System will allow us to provide DNA-based clinical assays of unprecedented value for the diagnosis of genetic disorders,” stated David Margulies, Chairman and CEO of Correlagen. “Helicos was the obvious choice for the CLIA-certified genetic diagnostics arena given the unique characteristics of this single-molecule sequencing platform. Our assays will have unmatched breadth, precision, and clinical utility.”

Correlagen, a Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA) certified laboratory, plans to use the Helicos® Genetic Analysis System for novel, high-content genetic tests based on targeted resequencing of broad panels of genes involved in disease areas such as cardiology, endocrinology, neuropsychiatry, and immunology. Helicos and Correlagen will optimize methods of sample preparation for targeted resequencing using Helicos’ single-molecule sequencing. Additionally, Correlagen will integrate its processing, variant annotation, and results interpretations applications into the Helicos bioinformatics pipeline.

“We are very excited to have Correlagen as both a customer and collaborator and look forward to working with them,” stated Ron Lowy, CEO of Helicos. “This relationship demonstrates our commercial progress in both the research market and in diagnostics.”

The Helicos® Genetic Analysis System is the world's first and only commercially available single molecule sequencing technology and enables genetic analysis without DNA ligation or amplification. Genetic analysis with the Helicos System can be performed with the simplest sample preparation procedures, thereby eliminating the biases, cost, complexity and errors introduced by DNA amplification, requiring minute amounts of starting material, and providing the most direct, accurate and cost-effective view of clinical samples.