NEW YORK – MGI Tech announced Monday that it will collaborate with Prepaire Labs to develop pharmaceuticals and precision medicine applications. The partnership will include the first corporate order in the Middle East of the MGI DNBSEQ-T20x2 sequencer and first application of MGI's technology in the region for drug discovery.
Prepaire Labs is an Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates-based drug discovery and precision medicine company establishing a semi-autonomous BSL-3 laboratory in the United Arab Emirates. The lab is developing a platform called Biotune, which creates a "digital twin" avatar of an individual that healthcare teams can interact with for diagnosis and treatment planning, including genetic makeup, medical history, and real-time biometrics.
Prepaire also uses patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), genome editing, high-content cellular phenotyping, and machine learning to create in vitro disease models optimizing genetics, cell type, environment, and multidimensional data collection to increase the predictability of clinical outcomes. Specifically, it will provide customers with "clinical trials on a chip" using microfluidic devices combined with printed organoid bio-networks.
The addition of T20 will equip Prepaire Labs with the capacity to provide adaptable genome sequencing services, MGI said in a statement, which are vital to the Biotune platform.
"We are thrilled to work with Prepaire Labs to harness T20's ultra-high throughput and great cost-efficiency for understanding and treating diseases at a personalized level," Roy Tan, general manager of MGI Asia Pacific, said in a statement.
The T20 is a fully automated genetic sequencer that enables sequencing for less than $100 per genome, MGI said.
The collaboration will focus on developing assays for whole-genome sequencing, a 100 percent automated "smart" laboratory, developing methods for complex genome analysis, and comarketing.