NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Canopy Biosciences announced today that it has obtained an exclusive license for error correction technology in next-generation sequencing from Washington University in St. Louis.
According to the firm, the license contains both a unique method and bioinformatic tools that improve the level of detection in NGS, allowing researchers to identify ultra-rare gene variants.
"Given their ever-expanding applications for this technology, [Canopy is] committed to making innovation accessible to researchers, which will facilitate another level of insight into disease through NGS," co-inventor and WUSTL associate pediatrics professor Todd Druley said in a statement.
Canopy plans to launch a service based on the license by the second quarter of 2019.
"The power that this technology brings to genomic sequencing is game-changing; taking the error rate for NGS from 5 in 100 sequencings to 1 in 10,000," Canopy Biosciences CEO Edward Weinstein said in a statement. "Such a significant improvement over the current methods has remarkable implications for the research community, but the potential for error corrected sequencing in the clinical space will change the way patients are tested."