Companies

Two Pore Guys single-molecule diagnostic platform update

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Two Pore Guys Artist Rendition, kindly provided by 2PG

Two Pore Guys (2PG) has come a long way in a little over 18 months Background of Two Pore Guys At the recent Next Generation Diagnostics Conference in Washington DC (#NGDx18) Two Pore Guys had a nice exhibit where I had the privilege of meeting Tyler Shropshire Ph.D., their Sr. Scientific Manager of R&D. It … Read more

Observations from American Association for Cancer Research 2018 #AACR18

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It is something of a tradition for me to give some reviews of notable presentations from past AACR conferences. For example, here’s one that I did while at SeraCare for #AACR16, here’s one from #AACR15, and another one here from #AACR14. (Briefly looking for highlights from 2017, well it looks like something is remiss!) I’ve had … Read more

Bionano Genomics’ New DLS Saphyr Technology at #AGBT18

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It has been almost five years since I wrote this post about Bionano Genomics and OpGen, and tools to look at structural variation. At that time OpGen was mapping bacterial genomes and Bionano Genomics would do insect genomes (about 100x as large), and the open question at that time was whether these technologies could scale … Read more

Highlights from the #AGBT18 Advances in Genome Biology and Technology Orlando Florida

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I have had the privilege of attending this conference every year (except for one) for over 10 years, and this year has a few memorable experiences, presentations, conversations and introductions. Companies come and go; the mix of attendees is of course different every year; and I’ve had enough change in my own professional affiliation that … Read more

NanoString’s Digital Spatial Profiling Microscope at #AGBT18

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Now that another year has passed it is great to see the NanoString Digital Spatial profiling microscope near its commercial launch. The platform will be in early access to select customers in the fourth quarter of 2018, and full commercial launch in the first half of 2019. For those interested in accessing the technology, they … Read more

Ion GeneStudio S5: The latest iteration of Thermo Fisher Scientific NGS

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With the beginning of the influential JP Morgan Healthcare investor conference this week in San Francisco, you can expect an avalanche of news from companies large and small regarding all things therapuetic and diagnostic. With an official count of about 9,000 attendees, there are many more in San Francisco who are there to have other … Read more

The Core Competency of Google is not Life Sciences

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What does Google X have to offer in life science diagnostic development? I’ve picked up a phrase, ‘it’s a narrow world’, from somewhere in my travels. Way back in my laboratory manager days in Santa Monica California at the John Wayne Cancer Institute (‘laboratory manager’ sounds so much better than ‘laboratory technician’), I met a … Read more

WaferGen SmartChip TE™ – a PCR-based approach to target enrichment

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A WaferGen chip, finger and photo courtesy Dale Yuzuki
A WaferGen chip, photo courtesy Dale Yuzuki

WaferGen is a California Bay-Area company that originally developed an idea similar to BioTrove, which was to create a solid substrate with nanoliter-sized wells for high throughput real-time PCR. WaferGen’s SmartChip™ has 5,184 wells (that’s a 54 multiple of 96), while BioTrove’s OpenArray™ has 3,072 (that’s a 32 multiple of 96). The concept is that each well contains a real-time assay master mix and the sample of interest, and a flexible format of sample number / real-time targets (either gene expression or end-point genotyping) can be performed in a single run.

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The upcoming Proton PII and the NextSeq 500

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Record PI runs with a 20.5GB at the top, from the Ion Community site
Record PI runs with a 20.5GB at the top, from the Ion Community site

There has been a lot of publicity around the NextSeq 500 from Illumina, and it appears to have been designed to compete directly against Ion Torrent’s upcoming PII chip. Thanks to a visit to upstate New York last week, I met Dr. Sridar Chittur who told me how important it was to put current information out on this blog, and if I can put out the disclaimers up-front it would be very helpful for those thinking about what benchtop system to purchase over the next several months.

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Nabsys single molecule mapping technology

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Close-up of Nabsys ChipAnother interesting single-molecule technology is a company out of Providence (RI) called Nabsys. For several years I had heard the name involved in developing single-molecule sequencing technology, and this technology will start its initial product around genomic mapping, rather than sequencing.

For background on genomic mapping and CNV analysis along with the competitive landscape, here are  prior pieces written previously called BioNano Genomics, Opgen and Copy Number Variation, and an update on BioNano from last Fall’s ASHG meeting. So while BioNano Genomics and OpGen both use optical mapping of single molecules, Nabsys uses electrical detection. (Cue the optical vs. digital detection methodology of Ion Torrent here).

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