NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Pacific Biosciences today announced the 10 institutions that have purchased its Single Molecule Real Time DNA sequencing system as part of its early access program in North America.
The early access customers are Baylor College of Medicine; the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard; Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory; the US Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute; The Genome Center at Washington University; Monsanto; the National Cancer Institute/SAIC-Frederick; the National Center for Genome Resources; the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research; and Stanford University.
The Menlo Park, Calif.-based firm said that the first shipments to early-access customers will take place during the first half of this year. It intends to use the 10-site, early-access program to gain feedback on the SMRT system and to ensure that the firm is fully prepared to scale its operations to meet expected demand at commercial launch of the system in the second half of this year.
"We are delighted that our initial early access program is already sold-out, and that we have a range of customer types — including genome centers, cancer research institutions, commercial organizations, and universities interested in applying our SMRT technology to a broad range of applications," Pacific Biosciences Chairman and CEO Hugh Martin said in a statement. "The wide array of applications that will be explored by our initial customers will benefit from the key advantages of the SMRT system: long reads, fast cycle times, flexibility, and single-molecule resolution."
The firm said that it also plans early-access programs for Europe and Asia later this year.
Last week, Pacific Biosciences named the 11 initial members of a new partner program aimed at providing complete solutions for the SMRT system when it launches. Among those partners are Agilent Technologies, Caliper Life Sciences, CLC bio, Fluidigm, GenoLogics, and others.