Helicos BioSciences Corporation (NASDAQ: HLCS), today announced the sale of a Helicos® Genetic Analysis System to a collaborative Dutch research group led by the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC), further including the medical centers of Amsterdam (AMC) Groningen (UMCG) and Rotterdam (Erasmus MC) and funded by a grant from NWO, the Netherlands Organization of Scientific Research. The system will be installed at the Leiden Genome Technology Center (LGTC), headed by Professor Johan den Dunnen, a leader in the fields of genomic research and technology.
“We are very proud to have LUMC as a customer. They have a strong tradition of adopting breakthrough technologies and have seen the unique benefits of single molecule analysis first-hand.” stated Ron Lowy, Helicos Chief Executive Officer.
The relationship between the medical center and Helicos began with a collaboration in which researchers at the LUMC’s Forensic Laboratory (FLDO) provided the company with ancient human DNA samples for analysis using Helicos’ revolutionary True Single Molecule Sequencing (tSMS)™ technology. Unlike alternative, amplification-based, next-generation sequencing technologies, Helicos’ tSMS approach provided informative human sequences from these ancient remains, demonstrating the technology’s unique ability to analyze highly degraded and compromised DNA samples. The project was led by Professor Peter de Knijff and graduate student Eveline Altena. The resulting data were reported at various conferences in September and October of 2009, including at the American Society of Human Genetics Conference in Honolulu. The data are being prepared for publication.
“Based on our initial results with another technology, we were not expecting to get much information from these highly degraded samples. Helicos was able to provide us with a surprisingly high proportion of human sequence information from these historical human remains, allowing us to determine their ancestry and relatedness for the first time. This was beyond our greatest expectations.” said LGTC’s Johan den Dunnen.
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