Santa Clara, CA. (OBBeC) - Agilent Technologies has announced that it has acquired a license to commercialize a method developed at the Broad Institute for genome partitioning using Agilent’s Oligo Library Synthesis (OLS) technology. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Dr Chad Nusbaum, co-director of the Genome Sequencing and Analysis Program at the Broad Institute, described the improved method at an Agilent customer event recently at the American Association of Cancer Research meeting in San Diego, Calif.

“We’re working on a simple, highly multiplexed, cost-effective way to enable investigators to remove the sample-preparation bottleneck in sequencing targeted regions of mammalian genomes, using relatively small amounts of input DNA,” Nusbaum said. “Agilent’s expertise in custom oligo synthesis and our expertise in production-scale sequencing are a natural match-up to overcome these challenges.”

“The Broad is part of our early-access program, in which we made oligo library synthesis capability available to a select number of luminaries to find out how these creative scientists could use custom complex mixtures of long oligonucleotides,” said Dr Yvonne Linney, Agilent vice president and general manager, Genomics. “This work to eliminate the sample preparation bottleneck of next-generation sequencing will greatly accelerate our understanding of how genes operate.”

According to the announcement, Agilent plans to offer kits containing custom mixtures of long biotinylated RNA molecules that can efficiently capture 5-10 megabases of genomic DNA sample in a single tube. The method is based on the combination of the Agilent SurePrint platform, capable of synthesizing high-quality oligo mixtures, and the protocols developed by the Broad Institute to transform these into RNA probes.

These RNA probes can, in turn, be used to capture genomic regions of interest in a simple, scalable and highly multiplexed manner, simplifying the process for targeted re-sequencing.

“The ability to perform the capture reaction in a small volume solution enables a significant increase in the kinetic efficiency and enables users to scale from tens to thousands of samples without adding significant personnel,” said Dr Emily LeProust, Agilent R&D Chemistry and Genome Partitioning program manager.