When a leading scientific society hosts an annual meeting, you can expect the conference program and meeting exhibit hall to attract a number of relevant companies. Furthermore, the meeting will provide an auspicious opportunity for these companies to highlight certain current developments. Well, the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) Annual Meeting is no exception.
Here has GENERATION, we’ve noticed several companies we’ve covered recently making their presence felt at the current ASHG meeting. These companies include NanoString Technologies, Quantum-Si and Ultima Genomics.
NanoStrings Technologies
NanoString, a space biology company, claims to offer an “ecosystem of innovative discovery and translational research solutions, enabling its customers to map the universe of biology.” More details about NanoString can be found on the GENERATION websites NanoString Archives. For example, the company has been mentioned in several GENERATION articles on space biology. We also presented a meeting with Joseph M. Beechem, PhD, Scientific Director of NanoString.
At ASHG, NanoString will be in booth 1523. Additionally, the company will present an educational session (“In-Depth, Subcellular, and Ligand-Receptor Maps from the Spatial Atlas of Human Anatomy (SAHA) Project”) and four posters (each will describe applications driven by one of NanoString’s platforms). One of the three NanoString speakers at the event will be none other than Beecham.
On NanoString’s website, some details about the company’s educational session are provided: “The goal (of the SAHA initiative) is to create a comprehensive open source spatial reference standard accessible to researchers around the world to make advance our knowledge of space biology. NanoString offers a comprehensive set of spatial solutions, including the CosMx™ Spatial Molecular Imager (SMI) for single-cell spatial imaging (which identifies rare cell types and captures cell-cell interactions) and the GeoMx® Whole transcriptome profiling based on Digital Spatial Profiler (DSP) tissue biology for large translational studies. The AtoMx™ Spatial Computing Platform (SIP) solves the challenge of managing large spatial data sets with an open, cost-effective cloud-based computing solution.
Quantum-If
Quantum-Si, which calls itself Protein Sequencing Company, has a suite of technologies focused on the “proteomics revolution.” The foundational piece of the company’s technology is a semiconductor chip designed to “enable next-generation single-molecule protein sequencing and digitize proteomics research to advance drug discovery and diagnostics beyond this. which was possible with DNA sequencing.”
More details about Quantum-Si can be found on the GENERATION websites Quantum-Si Archiveswhich highlights articles published in 2023. For a slightly deeper dive, go back to a 2021 GEN edge profile by Jonathan Rothberg, PhD, founder of Quantum-Si. In the profile (“Rothberg returns: Quantum-Si aims to transform proteomics digital”), Rothberg is quoted as follows: “What we use is time. The beautiful thing is that the chips measure time with pinpoint accuracy, allowing us to differentiate between different amino acids. We can even differentiate between modified amino acids. When you’re developing drugs for a large pharmaceutical company, you want to know what proteins are being modified and we can see those modifications.
ASHG, Quantum-Si will be present at booth 115, to showcase its next-generation benchtop protein sequencing instrument, Platinum™, and share its vision for transforming genomics and proteomics research. Quantum-Si’s Chief Commercial Officer, Grace Johnston, PhD, and President and CEO, Jeff Hawkins, will be available to discuss the company’s technology and the vital importance of novel protein sequencing and proteomics. generation.
Additionally, on Thursday, November 2 at 4:30 p.m., Quantum-Si scientists will present: Unleashing Next-Generation Protein Sequencing with Platinum™: How It Will Transform Genomics and Proteomics Research.
Ultima Genomics
Ultima Genomics, developer of an innovative new ultra-high-throughput sequencing architecture, has attracted a lot of attention since the company launched the UG100 platform. According to the bioRxiv preprint by the company’s scientists, the UG100 is a “new massively parallel sequencing platform that combines an open-flow cell design on a circular wafer with large surface area and primarily natural nucleotides that enable optical endpoint detection without reversible terminators. »
The flow cell hosts a dense array of sequencing beads, and as it rotates, reagents distributed near its center are spread across its surface by centrifugal force. Then, an optical scan of the rotating surface is carried out continuously, using a process similar to that used for reading a compact disc.
For more details on the UG100 and Ultima Genomics, visit GENERATION websites Ultima Genomics Archives. Consult in particular a recent profile which features detailed remarks from Ultima CEO Gilad Almogy, PhD. For example, he developed the company’s motto, which is “Unlocking the power of genomics at scale.”
“I haven’t come across any areas yet where people don’t want more data,” Almogy said. “Each (person) will have a complete sequence of their genome, that’s a given.” But, he added, it’s a person’s germline — the DNA sequence they are born with — not how it changes. What happens to your mutation profile or methylation profile? It’s not static. And that data, Almogy pointed out, will become an increasingly important part of healthcare.
At ASHG, Ultima will be at booth 1823 and will present an industry training session titled “Empowering Genomics at Scale.” The company will also present, alongside several early access customers, new data on a range of different applications.
Sen Zhao of Baylor College of Medicine will present data generated at Baylor using an early access UG100 instrument in a talk titled “Clinical Utility of Deep-RNAseq in the Diagnosis of Mendelian Disorder,” demonstrating how ultra-sequencing Whole transcriptome depth of clinical samples reveals alternative isoforms and splicing patterns beyond what is normally observed with current standard sequencing depth.
Betty Liu from the Greenleaf Lab at Stanford University will highlight the use of Ultima’s technology to perform a systematic investigation of the effects of varying levels of transcription factors (TFs) on the accessibility and expression of genes using high-throughput ATAC-seq.
Watchmaker Genomics will demonstrate gene fusion detection via cost-effective whole transcriptome sequencing using the Watchmaker Optimized RNA Library Prep Kit.
Ultima will demonstrate improvements in calling short germline variants and copy number variants from whole genome sequencing, demonstrating that its sequencing methodology provides a robust, cost-effective method that holds promise for research and clinical applications. In collaboration with Variantyx, these methods are being applied to whole genome sequencing of clinical samples to demonstrate accurate detection of common pathogenic clinical variants.
