RainDance Launches Comprehensive Sequencing Panel for Cancer Mutation Screening and Research

Cancer “HotSpot” Panel enables customers to sequence, in a single assay, more than 13,000 mutations associated with cancer progression and resistance to therapy

AACR Annual Meeting 2012

LEXINGTON, Mass. & CHICAGO--()--RainDance Technologies, Inc., the Digital Biology™ company, today announced the worldwide availability of its new panel for cancer mutation screening research using any next-generation sequencing (NGS) system. The RainDance Cancer Hotspot Panel enables researchers to simultaneously interrogate more than 13,000 cancer “hotspots” across 54 genes.

Developed with researchers from the University of California, San Diego, the Cancer HotSpot Panel leverages RainDance’s proprietary primer design pipeline to target relevant driver mutations in the genome and provide highly accurate, consistent, and reproducible results. When used in combination with the RainDance DeepSeq™ Solution, it also enables researchers to detect known mutations and discover new mutations represented in as little as 1-5 percent of a heterogeneous tumor. The results of RainDance’s technology were recently cited in two peer-reviewed papers published in The New England Journal of Medicine1 and Genome Biology2.

“We have been impressed with the performance of the RainDance platform for detecting somatic mutations,” said Kelly A. Frazer, Ph.D., Professor of Pediatrics and Chief of the Division of Genome Information Sciences at the UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center. “We have already published data using the RainDance platform together with the Illumina MiSeq™ System and we anticipate the RainDance method to be our platform of choice for samples with low cellularity or with considerable heterogeneity.”

“We are pleased to offer this new panel to the cancer research community which has been seeking solutions that better optimize their sequencing capacity and accelerate their sample-to-data workflow,” said Andy Watson, Chief Marketing Officer at RainDance. “The Cancer Hotspot Panel enables complete coverage and high sequencing depth, and also delivers the high specificity and unbiased allelic representation that cancer research requires and has sorely lacked.”

The Cancer HotSpot Panel is the latest addition to RainDance’s portfolio of integrated cancer research analysis solutions, which consists of fully automated instrumentation (ThunderStorm™ System), a proprietary and customizable primer design pipeline, and consumables and reagents for applications including Targeted DNA Sequencing, ultra-deep sequencing of FFPE and fresh frozen samples (DeepSeq™ Solution), cancer pathway analysis (ONCOSeq™ Panel), methylation analysis (MethylSeq™ Solution) and digital PCR (RainDrop™ System).

RainDance is showcasing its complete line of products targeting cancer research analysis at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) in Chicago at booth #2706. For more information, please visit: http://www.raindancetech.com/AACR.

For more information on RainDance Technologies, please visit: www.RainDanceTech.com.

About RainDance Technologies

RainDance Technologies, the Digital Biology™ Company, is pioneering the use of high-throughput picodroplet-based analysis in human health and life science research. The company's core RainStorm™ technology generates millions of discrete droplets that can encapsulate a single molecule, cell or reaction and be digitally analyzed and sorted one at a time. The power, precision and simplicity of picodroplets enable researchers to answer complex questions with unprecedented sensitivity and quantitation. The complete RainDance solution includes automated instrumentation, customizable bioinformatics and high-value consumables and reagents for applications including targeted next-generation DNA sequencing, methylation, digital PCR and single cell analysis. Based in Lexington, Massachusetts, the company supports scientists around the world through its international sales and support operations and a global network of distributors and service providers. For more information, please visit www.RainDanceTech.com.

For research use only. Not for use in diagnostics procedures.

RainDance Technologies, the RainDance Technologies logo, RainStorm, ThunderStorm, RainDrop, DeepSeq, ONCOSeq, MethylSeq and Digital Biology are trademarks of RainDance Technologies, Inc. All other brands may be trademarks of their respective holders.

Citations

1. Ewing CM, Ray AM, Lange EM, Zuhlke KA, Robbins CM, Tembe WD, et al. Germline Mutations In HOXB13 and Prostate-Cancer Risk. New England Journal of Medicine. (2012). 366:141-9. To view an abstract of this publication, please visit: http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1110000.

2. Harismendy O, Schwab RB, Bao L, Olson J, Rozenzhak S, Kotsopoulos SK, Pond S, Crain B, Chee MS, Messer K, Link DR, Frazer KA. Detection of Low Prevalence Somatic Mutations in Solid Tumors With Ultra-Deep Targeted Sequencing. Genome Biology. (2011). 12:R124. doi:10.1186/gb-2011-12-12-r124. To view abstract, please visit: http://genomebiology.com/2011/12/12/R124/abstract.

Contacts

for RainDance Technologies
Colin Sanford, 203-340-2441
colin@bioscribe.com

Release Summary

RainDance Launches Comprehensive Sequencing Panel for Cancer Mutation Screening and Research

Contacts

for RainDance Technologies
Colin Sanford, 203-340-2441
colin@bioscribe.com