NEW YORK – Qiagen has non-exclusively licensed certain patents from Phase Genomics enabling it to sell its EpiTect Hi-C kits in the US.
Chromatin conformation research, including chromatin conformational analysis (Hi-C) has become an important genomics tool for understanding the intracellular structure and organization of the genome.
Through its agreement with Seattle-based Phase, Qiagen can now sell Phase's proprietary proximity-ligation technology for this type of research in the US. Qiagen will offer the technology through its EpiTect Hi-C Kit, a single-box solution that requires fewer than 250,000 mammalian cells to generate sequence-ready libraries.
Customers will have two options to analyze data from experiments: the EpiTect Hi-C Portal located on Qiagen's GeneGlobe Data Analysis Center, or Phase Genomics' cloud-based services for Hi-C data analysis.
"Qiagen's EpiTect portfolio has until now focused on identifying individual methylation marks and histone modification in the genome at the nucleotide level," Kerstin Steinert, vice president of product development and research services at Qiagen, said in a statement. "With the Qiagen EpiTect Hi-C Kit, we are providing an end-to-end solution to study the 3D genome and identify larger structural aspects of chromatin conformation and genomic architecture."
Ivan Liachko, founder and CEO of Phase Genomics, said in a statement that the partnership demonstrates "strong confidence" in the value of Phase's Hi-C proximity-ligation technology. "Now, scientists studying epigenetics can more fully understand changes in genome architecture that may trigger disease in ways that are more cost-effective than ever before," Liachko said.