NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Sigma-Aldrich has partnered with Redwood City, Calif.-based startup GenapSys to co-market the Genius system, an electronic sequencer GenapSys has been developing for the last few years.
Shaf Yousaf, Sigma-Aldrich's vice president of technology and business development, told GenomeWeb that GenapSys is "close to launching the machine," which Sigma-Aldrich will market it on its website.
Sigma-Aldrich has been developing reagents for the Genius platform for about a year, he said, and recently added the co-marketing agreement. "We believe this is a basic platform that has many applications in research [and] in the applied market, and therefore, this partnership is extremely important," he said.
According to Sigma-Aldrich's website, the Genius sequencer "will be useful in fields such as diagnostics, agriculture, food testing, biofuels, and forensics."
GenapSys first unveiled the Genius platform at the Advances in Genome Biology and Technology meeting last year. The instrument, which is the size of a lunchbox, uses a polymerase-based sequencing-by-synthesis chemistry, coupled with chip-based electronic detection.
The company has not yet released any performance specs or sequencing data generated on the platform and has not announced a launch date. Genapsys executives did not respond to a request for information before deadline.
In 2013, GenapSys raised $37 million in a Series B financing round that included Decheng Capital, IPV Capital, entrepreneur and tech investor Yuri Milner, and the Stanford StartX Fund.
Also, in 2012, the firm won almost $4 million in grant funding from the National Human Genome Research Institute.