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Macrogen Inks Genome Analysis Deal With King's College London

NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Macrogen today announced an agreement to supply its next-generation sequencing services to the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London.

Under the agreement, the firm will provide its X-Genome service, a large-scale human whole-genome sequencing and analysis service using the Illumina HiSeq X Ten NGS system.

“We are studying the effects of structural changes in gene units on the brain functions of schizophrenia patients and the possibility of developing new diagnostic and treatment methods,” King's College London professor John Powell said in a statement. “The HiSeq X Ten-based X-Genome service provided by Macrogen is considered to be the most useful in identifying genetic variations from the large-scale patient samples that have been studied by us.”

Seoul-based Macrogen provides genome analysis and other sequencing services. The firm was among the first commercial service providers to buy the HiSeq X Ten system and in January became the first to sign a preferred supply agreement with Illumina for the system.

Financial and other terms of the agreement were not disclosed. 

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