NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Life Technologies said today that it will collaborate with Boston Children's Hospital to develop next-generation sequencing workflows in a CLIA and CAP certified laboratory.
As part of the collaboration, the hospital plans to purchase Life Tech's Ion Proton, a benchtop, semiconductor sequencing machine.
David Margulies, director of the Gene Partnership Program at Boston Children's Hospital, said in statement that the deal is an "important first step toward providing informed, personalized care for patients whose conditions are difficult to treat."
The deal is Life Tech's second announced this week to develop sequencing protocols for the Ion Proton in collaboration with a children's hospital. Earlier this week, it said it would work with the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, which has launched a new Centre for Genetic Medicine and plans to install four Proton machines.
Paul Billings, Life Tech's chief medical officer, commented in a statement that these kinds of partnerships are "essential to our medical sciences strategy as we seek to assist researchers in discovering improved diagnostics and treatments for genetic conditions."
In a separate announcement today, Life Tech said that it is collaborating with the University of North Texas Health Science Center's Institute of Applied Genetics to use the firm's Ion Personal Genome Machine system to further the center's forensic DNA research. Life Tech said that it will collaborate with the center to train forensic analysts in applying next-gen sequencing to their research.