Next Gen Diagnostics announces the formation of a subsidiary in Israel to offer low cost whole genome sequencing of pathogens for infection control and infectious disease diagnostics.
TEL AVIV , Jan. 9, 2023 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- Next Gen Diagnostics, which is bringing whole genome sequencing to clinical microbiology, announced today the formation of its subsidiary NGD Israel, Ltd., to offer low-cost pathogen sequencing, transmission detection, and sequence-based infectious disease diagnostics to Israel. NGD's pathogen sequencing lab will be centrally located to facilitate providing rapid pathogen sequencing service to customers across Israel. NGD will offer a complete turn-key service including extraction, library preparation, sequencing, and fully validated bioinformatic analysis, at unprecedentedly low cost.
"NGD and its distinguished cofounders have developed and validated among the most advanced and complete automation of bacterial WGS bioinformatics, from quality control and relatedness determination to resistome profiling and antibiotic resistance prediction," said Paul A. Rhodes, Ph.D., NGD's founder and CEO. "The entire suite of information, validated in a series of published studies, is provided to users in an intuitive web-based interface that is automatically populated overnight with the information generated from each sequencing run. Our rapid turn-around enables this information to be at the fingertips of infection control and infectious disease services fast enough to have a real-time impact on infection control."
NGD is able to offer a complete sequencing service at a price below PCR panels because of the cost advantages of its microfluidic sample preparation system. This proprietary system enables library preparation for up to 48 distinct strains to be processed in a disposable the size of a single plate, in a fully automated fashion. An instrument the size of a desktop computer replaces the dining table-sized robots used to automate sample preparation in competing services, with microfluidic reaction chambers less than a uL in volume enabling reduction in the consumption of costly reagents, together greatly reducing sample preparation costs.
"Israel will be one the first markets in which NGD will offer its complete sample preparation-sequencing-bioinformatics service," noted Dr. Rhodes. "Israel is well-known to be an early adopter of medical system advances, as it demonstrated during Covid. NGD's service will offer the chance to use prospective sequencing of pathogens to detect transmission of antibiotic resistant infection."
"NGD's bioinformatic system was applied at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge in tandem with prospective sequencing to detect transmission and guide intervention, where it was documented to have stopped an outbreak ," said Dr. Rhodes. "The low cost of the service makes prospective sequencing practical as the new paradigm for the detection of transmission and prevention of outbreak in hospitals, where transmission of drug resistant infection is such an appalling problem."
About Next Gen Diagnostics
NGD, founded by Dr. Paul A. Rhodes along with Sanger Institute group leaders, has built and validated world-leading automation of pathogen bioinformatics enabling high throughput low cost clinical use of WGS. In addition, NGD holds the exclusive rights to a unique microfluidic sample preparation system for clinical and commercial applications of pathogen WGS. NGD offers a high volume turn-key sequencing services to enable detection of transmission in hospitals, and is working with leading collaborators in the US, Europe and Israel to be among the first to bring WGS-based regulated diagnostics to patient care. NGD is based in the US, with subsidiaries based in Cambridge, UK and in Israel.
For press inquiries, please contact: [email protected]
Media Contact
Paul Rhodes, Next Gen Diagnostics, 561-659-5400, [email protected]
SOURCE Next Gen Diagnostics
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