NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Oxford Nanopore Technologies said today that it is expanding its business in China, naming Shanghai NanodigmBio as a distributor of its sequencing products and services and preparing to open a new office in Shanghai this year.
Oxford Nanopore already has commercial and support staff based in China, and said that several Chinese customers have been installing the GridIon X5 sequencing platform.
Among them is GrandOmics, which plans to start a nanopore sequencing service for Chinese customers through its NextOmics service business. The company has already received three GridIons, with three additional units yet to arrive. Another customer is CookGene, a subsidiary of Forevergen that focuses on nanopore sequencing, which will receive a GridIon later this month and which plans to use it for genome de novo assembly projects. Finally, Simcere Diagnostics, a division of Simcere Pharmaceutical Group, a pharma and healthcare firm, is expecting to receive a GridIon soon. The company plans to use it to develop clinical diagnostic tools, R&D services, and healthcare products for infectious disease management.
According to Oxford Nanopore, researchers across China are now using its MinIon sequencer for a variety of applications, such as pathogen research; metagenomics; and human, plant, and animal genetics. Direct RNA sequencing projects by Chinese researchers will start soon, according to the firm.