NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Agilent Technologies today said it will collaborate with Cell Line Genetics to develop high-throughput, genomic characterization workflows for confirming and monitoring the integrity of cell lines for translational and regenerative medicine research.
The workflows will be based on Agilent's CGH+SNP microarrays and SureFISH technologies. The arrays will be used to detect amplifications, deletions, and cell line clonality, while the FISH assays will be used to confirm aberrations "identified down to the single-cell level," said Agilent.
Cell Line will offer array CGH services for cancer cell line characterization, Agilent said, adding that the technology can detect large numbers of anomalies with higher sensitivity and greater accuracy, as well as better coverage, than traditional cytogenetics. It also offers faster turnaround time to customers, Agilent said.
In testing involving more than 15,000 stem cell lines, Cell Line found that 20 percent showed aneuploidy, and 60 to 70 percent of these were mosaic.
"Most significantly, the cells harboring genomic anomalies can have a proliferative advantage and overtake the culture, compromising the validity of study data and resulting in the loss of samples, time, and funds," Agilent said.
In a statement, Victor Fung, Agilent's senior director of global marketing for the Genomics Solutions division, said that the collaboration with Cell Line will provide that firm's customers with services better tailored to meet their needs.
"In addition, Cell Line Genetics can better control operating costs because targeted array CGH designs can focus probe density where it matters most, enabling much faster data interpretation than SNP microarrays. Speed of analysis is particularly important in this high-throughput environment," he said.
Financial and other terms of the firms' agreement were not disclosed.