Highly valued probe sequence and annotation information becomes available to the broad gene expression research market for the first time
Agilent Technologies has announced that it has licensed the proprietary Incyte Genomics probe sequence and annotation information used in the creation of Agilent cDNA and oligo-based microarrays.
This information will now be made available to Agilent microarray customers for the first time.
Prior to this announcement, access to this proprietary and highly valued information underlying Agilent's microarrays was formerly available only to customers of Incyte's LifeSeq Gold, LifeSeq Foundation, and ZooSeq content databases.
Several previous agreements between the two companies have provided Agilent access to Incyte cDNA clones and database content for the purpose of designing gene probes on Agilent microarrays and key intellectual property related to microarray manufacture and sample preparation.
With this new agreement, Agilent microarray customers will, at no additional expense, have enhanced sequence annotation based upon the Proteome BioKnowledge Library title line, including the related protein structure, function, and disease-association information, hand-edited from the scientific literature.
In addition, customers will have password-protected access to microarray probe sequences for each gene probe.
This will benefit a large customer base using Human 1, Human 2, Mouse, and Rat cDNA Catalogue Microarray Kits.
Future 60mer catalog oligo microarrays that use Incyte sequences are expected to include this feature.
"Incyte continues to provide extremely high quality sequence content and annotation," said Barney Saunders, vice president and general manager of Agilent's BioResearch Solutions unit.
"We are delighted that our customers can now gain expanded access to this annotation, further enhancing their disease and drug discovery research." "Agilent has made a bold step by providing the Incyte proprietary probe sequence information to its life science microarray customers.
This is further indication of its commitment, and ours, to scientific excellence," said James Merryweather, Incyte's executive vice president of business development and commercial operations.
Current customers of Agilent microarrays can receive additional information about obtaining expanded access to the Incyte content via the Agilent website.
The new sequence and annotation information will be added into current products and is already being applied in the development of new microarray products.
