NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Real Time Genomics and Omicia today announced a deal to integrate each other's platforms into a workflow for identifying disease-causing variants in whole genomes and exomes for the clinical interpretation of genomes for childhood diseases.
RTG's platform provides read alignments and variant detection from raw sequencing data from different sequencing platforms. As part of the deal, variants detected from the technology, reported as a DNA variant file, will be fed into Omicia's Opal engine for interpretation, resulting in a report for whole-genome sequences that can be clinically actionable. The companies said that the report can be delivered in hours, compared to days using other methods.
The integrated product will be launched later this year. Financial and other terms of the deal were not disclosed.
"RTG believes that partnering with Omicia will be of great value to biomedical and clinical researchers using genomics in their childhood disease efforts," RTG CEO Steve Lombardi said in a statement. "Our combined analysis and interpretation workflow can provide a simple, accurate approach to quickly identify the important variants, thereby removing an important bottleneck to the use of genomics in personalized medicine."
"For genomic testing to reach its full potential, we must simplify the analysis of complex sequence data and integrate this information with other routine tests to help diagnose disease and guide treatment decisions," Omicia CEO Mike Aicher added. "Through this partnership, Omicia is expanding its offering towards a more complete solution to bring researchers and clinicians better tools for translating genomic data into medically actionable information."
His firm announced a deal with Spiral Genetics last month, also leveraging the Opal system.