Budapest, Hungary & Cambridge, MA (PRWEB) July 18, 2014 -- Global biotechnology company Omixon, headquartered in Budapest with US offices in Cambridge, MA, announces the launch of Omixon Holotype HLA™ - a combination Assay and Software product that leverages the power of Next Generation Sequencing (NGS), for use on the Illumina® MiSeq sequencing platform. The assay and software have been optimized through collaboration with The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and will include a new software product, Omixon HLA Twin™, that features two different algorithms for orthogonal validation by data analysis and the most accurate high-resolution genotyping available.
“This new approach sets the stage for the thorough and accurate characterization of the HLA genes,” says Professor Dimitri Monos, Director of the Immunogenetics Laboratory in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at CHOP. “These genes are critical for any antigen-specific immune response and found to be very important for transplantation, have been associated with many autoimmune diseases, play a critical role in infectious diseases and most recently their relevance to pharmacogenomics has been demonstrated, as they influence immunological reactions to particular medications. It is very likely that this new technology will provide additional insights that may further elucidate the role of these genes/molecules in each of these disciplines and beyond in rather surprising and unpredictable ways.” The assay provides targeted amplification and library preparation reagents for the whole gene coverage of HLA-A, B, C and DQB1, and partial coverage for HLA-DRB1.
The resulting Illumina data provides even and deep coverage, allowing Omixon’s new HLA Twin software to fully resolve phase for both alleles at each locus and provide completely characterized novel allele sequences. Dr. Attila Berces, Founder and Chairman at Omixon says, “The Holotype HLA protocol is as much art as it is science. It’s wonderfully simple and a huge leap forward in terms of usability for HLA labs looking to keep pace with the latest technologies.” Similarly, he notes that “At Omixon, we have developed assay-specific features within the software that gives scientists the highest possible confidence in their genotyping results, a transparent system of notification flags to assist a clinical analyst with difficult to resolve alleles, and the benefit of two independent algorithms for analyzing the sequence data.” Omixon’s software implements two algorithms that are not just different, but orthogonal in their approach to resolving HLA genotypes, providing the only turnkey solution for analyzing HLA genotypes from NGS data.
The adoption of Omixon Holotype HLA by labs internationally will provide the opportunity to improve transplantation outcomes through a more refined assessment of donor compatibility, and will expedite the donor selection process from bone marrow registries. Dr. Berces notes that “Bone marrow transplantation in particular is one of the most expensive medical procedures with high mortality rates. Omixon’s new product should help to better understand the genetic factors of successful transplantation and thus improve not only patient outcome but economic efficiency of the procedure”. In addition to its role in transplantation, Omixon Holotype HLA is an advanced tool for disease association studies in immunology and infectious diseases, including therapeutic response studies for immunotherapeutics and adverse drug response studies.
INVITATION TO THE EARLY ACCESS PROGRAM FOR HOLOTYPE HLA
Omixon is making Holotype HLA available for purchase through an Early Access Program (EAP) to selected HLA laboratories across the globe that are planning to migrate to NGS-based HLA genotyping. Please contact Omixon’s CEO, Tim Hague directly tim(dot)hague(at)omixon(dot)com to inquire about the terms of participation. EAP members will be accepted until the maximum capacity is reached.
About OMIXON
Omixon is a global biotechnology company, headquartered in Budapest, Hungary, that commercializes disruptive innovations specializing in targeted applications for Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) Data. The Omixon Holotype HLA™ product combines a targeted HLA Assay and the Omixon HLA Twin™ software to deliver the most accurate high-resolution HLA genotyping available. In addition to analyzing targeted data from any NGS instrument, Omixon HLA Twin can be used to analyze the HLA region from Whole Exome Sequencing (WES) and Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS) data. Omixon maintains an active grant-funded research program and assists scientists and clinicians to analyze the most challenging genomic regions including HLA, KIR, ABO, BRCA and CFTR. For more information, visit http://www.omixon.com.
Peter Meintjes, PhD, Omixon Biocomputing, http://www.omixon.com, +1 2039472772, [email protected]
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