QIAGEN used last week’s Advances in Genome Biology and Technology meeting to announce the launch plans of several novel products designed to reduce the challenges of the most significant bottlenecks in next-generation sequencing (NGS).The new products add to QIAGEN’s rapidly expanding portfolio of “universal’” solutions designed to run with any NGS platform, including QIAGEN’s GeneReader platform, which is being prepared for launch later this year. QIAGEN representatives say the company is targeting two key challenges NGS users face: access to clinical samples and analysis of complex NGS data. QIAGEN is targeting these bottlenecks by developing products that will be available to users as universal workflow products.
Gaining access to adequate amounts of high-quality sample material often is a challenge to all NGS applications. QIAGEN has created several new products designed specifically to help users deal with difficult-to-handle samples: the GeneRead DNA FFPE Kit, designed to provide an easy-to-use procedure for efficient purification of DNA from formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded (FFPE) tissue sections; the REPLI-g WTA Single Cell Kit and REPLI-g Cell WGA & WTA Kit, designed to enable transcriptomic NGS analysis from single cells and comparative genomic and transcriptomic analysis from the same small sample; and exosome sample-preparation kits, which enable processing of nucleic acids from exosomes, tiny messenger packages in a biological communication system that transmits genetic instructions from cell to cell. QIAGEN also announced plans to launch a line of GeneRead DNAseq panels V2.0 in the second quarter of 2014. This line of products provides a PCR-based target enrichment approach compatible with any NGS platform. Learn more about QIAGEN’s NGS products and resources.
