CLC bio headed molecular diagnostics project receives $2M grant

CLC bio, Ion Torrent, and Aarhus University Hospital - Departments of Molecular Medicine and Clinical Genetics, have received a 2 million USD grant from the Danish National Advanced Technology Foundation.

The goal of the 3-year project is to develop an integrated software and hardware solution for molecular diagnostics that will be able to intelligently use the fast and cheap sequencing options that the high-throughput sequencing industry is providing, to faster and more precisely diagnose patient DNA samples through advanced, yet user-friendly software.

Professor at the Department of Molecular Medicine at Aarhus University Hospital, Dr. Torben Ørntoft, states, "Analysis and characterization of DNA will revolutionize the way patients will be diagnosed in the future. With the right solutions in place, this is an area that has huge potential to advance the medical sciences and ultimately save many human lives as we'll be able to faster and more precisely diagnose patients. Based on the rapid tournaround for sequencing results, we will be able to start the first critical treatments or preventive measures earlier, to ultimately ensure a greater degree of success!"

"Our Ion PGM sequencer does a single run in about an hour or two, which makes our simple, yet scalable technology ideal to be part of this molecular diagnostics project, where time is a critical factor in the patient diagnosis phase," said Vice President of Software & Informatics at Ion Torrent, Alan Williams, PhD.

Director of Scientific Development at CLC bio, Roald Forsberg, PhD, continues, "With our bioinformatics software solutions, we have succeeded in making advanced high-throughput sequencing technologies accessible to biomedical researchers. Now we want to bring the DNA sequencing revolution to the hospitals and clinics, in order to realize the huge potential of high-throughput sequencing within molecular diagnostics, and personalized- and translational medicine."

The project will lead to an IT solution that can be used for molecular diagnostics research as well as for clinical diagnostics in hospitals and outpatient clinics.

Source CLC bio