GenomeQuest has kicked off an award proram that will provide bioinformatics support to five labs that want to consolidate multiple Sanger-based diagnostic tests into one next-gen sequencing-based test.
Labs that are awarded the grants, which the company values at $20,000 each, will receive all the software, annotation data, and compute infrastructure required to process and store patient sequence data, produce tailored diagnostic reports, and perform follow-up research on aggregated results, according to the company.
To qualify for the grant, labs must operate a medical diagnostic lab that is listed under the National Center for Biotechnology Information's GeneTests website and also be committed to transitioning to NGS-based testing.
In an announcement on its website outlining the program, GenomeQuest cites as an example the University of Iowa, which has consolidated more than 20 Sanger-based deafness tests into one NGS-based test. The switch has reduced the total cost of molecular diagnosis from $75,000 to under $2,000, GenomeQuest said.