NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – BGI said late last week that it plans to launch a desktop sequencer called BGISEQ-500 in October.
BGISEQ-500 will be based on Complete Genomics' technology and will automate sample preparation, sequencing, and data analysis.
BGI also plans to run its noninvasive prenatal test, NIFTY, on the new instrument. Turnaround time for the test, from library construction to data analysis, will be 24 hours, and each run will multiplex between 16 and 192 samples.
A year ago, the China Food and Drug Administration approved the NIFTY test on two sequencing platforms — BGISEQ-100 and BGISEQ-1000 — which are based on Thermo Fisher Scientific's Ion Torrent platform and Complete Genomics' technology, respectively.
BGI said it will make more details about the BGISEQ-500 instrument available during the 10th International Conference on Genomics in Shenzhen in October.
The company announced in January that it plans to commercialize two next-gen sequencing systems — a large-scale platform and a desktop instrument — this year but provided no further details at the time.
Earlier this month, it provided first details on Revolocity, a high-throughput sequencing system that will initially be able to sequence 10,000 human genomes per year and has a list price of $12 million.