NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Helicos BioSciences said today that it has received an order for its Helicos Genetic Analysis System from an unnamed cancer research center in the US.
The order is the second for the firm’s flagship DNA sequencing platform since its launch earlier this year. The first customer, genomics services firm Expression Analysis, purchased a Helicos GAS in February.
Helicos said today that the cancer center will use the system in a research program involving cancer stem cell biology.
Further terms of the purchase were not disclosed.
In a separate announcement, Helicos said that it had signed a scientific collaboration with Sweden’s Uppsala University, under which researchers at the university will use Helicos’ single molecule sequencing technology to study changes in the cell nucleus that occur in the presence of growth factors.
Helicos said the researchers would study changes in the structure of the protein-DNA complexes that make up chromosomes and how they interact with transcription factors that bind DNA, which may “provide a more complete understanding of how structural features of the genome affect gene expression.”