Febit has announced the official launch of its sequence capture technology, Hybselect.
Hybselect effectively scales next generation sequencing to the needs of biomedical research and discovery by enabling large-scale studies.
The accessibility and capacity of sequencers have triggered a heightened demand for sequence capture technologies among geneticists; targeted re-sequencing of medically-relevant genome loci will enhance the understanding of health and disease in areas such as cancer and Alzheimer's disease.
The outcomes of such studies are significant in that they will allow improved diagnostics and targeted applications of medical agents.
'Hybselect enables large-scale targeted re-sequencing studies because of the high degree of automation combined with the power to detect genetically relevant information in the genome with high efficiency,' said Peer Staehler, chief scientist of Febit.
'The automated Hybselect technology will allow short hands-on time (minutes instead of hours), a high degree of reproducibility, and unmatched parallelism in hybselecting several genomic samples at a time,' he added.
Dr Matthew Huentelman, an investigator and lead collaborator at the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) in Phoenix, was one of the first researchers to use Hybselect.
His laboratory uses techniques to pin-point differences in genes and pathways that contribute to the development and progression of Alzheimer's disease.
Hybselect will be also employed in the Biomarker Discovery Center Heidelberg for the detection of novel tumour markers.
Within the European ReadNA-consortium (Revolutionary Approaches and Devices for Nucleic Acid analysis) Hybselect will support the selection and enrichment of specific gene loci for next generation sequencers.
The technology is available as a protocol for Febit's Geniom RT analyser, or as a full service including next-gen sequencing from Febit.
Hybselect is optimised for the Illumina GAII sequencing system, and will be available for other sequencing platforms soon.
