NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Washington State's Life Sciences Discovery Fund has awarded a $150,000 grant to a Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center scientist to fund a DNA sequencing technology that will be commercialized through a new company called Adaptive TCR Corporation.
The grant, which is part of a $600,000 LSDF program going to four Washington-based research teams, will be used to enhance a DNA sequencing technology that profiles T cells within the immune system.
The LSDF commercialization program started in 2009 and is aimed at promoting the translation of ideas or technologies from non-profits based in Washington into marketable products and services that can boost economic growth and competitiveness in the state.
The research at the Hutchinson center aims to scale up a high-throughput gene sequencing service that could be offered to researchers and could enable better diagnostics and treatments for immune system conditions.
Researchers can use T-cell receptor (TCR) sequence information to study immune system reconstitution following cord blood transplantation, immune responses to vaccines, and association of specific TCRs with autoimmune disorders, according to LSDF.
The scale-up effort may "markedly reduce" the costs of Adaptive TCR's service and enable researchers to access it within a shorter time frame, LSDF said.