NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Roche announced today that it has licensed technology from NuGen Technologies that will be included in Roche’s LightCycler RNA Pre-Amplification Kit, which will be launched in the third quarter of 2008.
Under the co-exclusive agreement, NuGen will supply components for the kit and has provided Roche with limited access to NuGen’s Ovation technology, which enables small and partially degraded RNA samples to be amplified into micrograms of cDNA.
The new LightCycler Kit will allow researchers to conduct whole-transcriptome gene expression analysis of challenging clinical samples, Roche said in a statement. The firm believes NuGen’s whole-transcriptome RNA amplification methodology will provide it with an advantage over competitors by enabling high-throughput, multi-test real-time PCR assays that have a quicker time to result.
Elizabeth Hutt, CEO of San Carlos, Calif.-based NuGen said that Roche’s use of the Ovation technology “is an important validation of the precision of our RNA amplification technology.”
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.