NEW YORK — Kromatid said on Monday that it has been awarded a two-year grant from the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) to advance its single-cell structural genomics technology for disease research.
The grant is worth roughly $1 million in its first year.
The de novo directional genomic hybridization (dGH) technology is designed to enable the measurement of simple, complex, and heterogenous structural variants. With the support of a previous NHGRI grant, the Longmont, Colorado-based company adapted it for screening cell libraries and batches of engineered cells.
With the new funding, Kromatid aims to use the dGH technology as the basis of an automated, high-throughput platform, called dGH DSCVR, for discovering genomic structural causes of rare disease and measuring unwanted structural rearrangements that occur during gene editing.
According to the grant's abstract, the platform will use high-density chromatid paints with bands of distinct spectra alongside image-analysis technology to identify balanced allelic translocations involving breakpoints at the same loci, inversions, and sister chromatid recombination and exchange events that are invisible to existing methods. It will also characterize deletions, duplications, translocations, aneuploidy, polyploidy, and more complex rearrangements.
"This funding enables Kromatid to develop analytical methods for therapeutics generated via CRISPR/Cas-9 and to help identify the genomic structural causes of debilitating diseases," Gretchen Pratt, Kromatid vice president of operations, said in a statement.