Directed Genomics, New England Biolabs to develop new technologies for NGS

New England Biolabs (NEB^®) and Directed Genomics together announce that they have established a partnership to develop a suite of new technologies for next generation sequencing (NGS), including target enrichment.

Commenting on the announcement, James V. Ellard, CEO of NEB said, "Directed Genomics is an innovative technology development organization building simple, efficient genomic workflows. Their unique, enzyme-based technologies offer substantial improvements in performance, efficiency and speed for NGS sample preparation.

"We are a nimble, entrepreneurial, technology development company purpose-built to move ideas quickly from initial concept to market," says Cynthia Richard, Founder and President of Directed Genomics. "Partnering with NEB allows us to leverage an extensive knowledge-base of enzyme activities, best-in-class manufacturing practices and their global commercial footprint."

The first joint product concept to be developed as a result of this partnership, which is being presented at the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) annual conference in San Diego, California, October 18-22nd, is a target enrichment technology that combines enrichment with NGS library construction into a single, seamless protocol. The approach is scalable and enables the conversion of small amounts of genomic DNA into sequence-ready libraries, in about six hours. Enrichment is also highly specific, enabling greater coverage of target regions with fewer sequencing reads than other currently-available target-capture methods.

"Though still in development, the technical data produced to date is impressive. We look forward to further developing this method and applying it in a variety of research and translational workflows," commented Theodore Davis, Director of Applications and Product Development at NEB.