NEW YORK – Synthetic oligonucleotide manufacturer ATDBio and researchers from the University of Oxford have won a £369,632 ($480,084) grant from Innovate UK to develop tagged microbeads for use in single-cell RNA sequencing library preparation.
ATDBio will develop improved oligonucleotide tagged beads, "which will help enhance the quality of the sequencing results and enable new types of experiments," the UK firm said in a statement on Tuesday.
Researchers led by Udo Oppermann, director of laboratory sciences at Oxford's Botnar Research Centre, will assess bead performance and investigate additional uses for them outside of single-cell RNA-seq.
"Our collaboration with the University of Oxford began in response to frequent comments from our customers about the need for improved droplet-based scRNA-seq microbeads," ATDBio CSO Tom Brown said in a statement. "This grant from Innovate UK allows ATDBio to use its oligonucleotide synthesis expertise to make the technology more effective and more accessible to researchers and clinicians."
ATDBio has laboratories in Southampton and Oxford.