Benzinga | Jul 20, 2021 07:05AM EDT

Pacific Biosciences Of California Reports Expansion Of Collaboration With Invitae

Collaboration to develop production-scale HiFi Sequencing platform

expected to Include technology from Omniome, Inc.

Combining both highly accurate long and short read sequencing technologies

expected to provide deeper clinical insights and lower the overall cost of analysis

MENLO PARK, Calif., July 20, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Pacific Biosciences of California, Inc. (NASDAQ:PACB)("Pacific Biosciences" or "PacBio"), a leading provider of high-quality, long-read sequencing platforms, and Invitae Corporation (NYSE:NVTA), a leading medical genetics company, today announced an intent to expand their multi-year collaboration to develop a production-scale high-throughput HiFi sequencing platform to include the sequencing technology developed by Omniome, Inc.

The expansion of the collaboration is expected to add the short read sequencing technology enabled by Sequencing by Binding (SBB) chemistry upon close of PacBio's proposed acquisition of Omniome, and contingent upon PacBio's and Invitae's agreement of associated terms. Omniome's novel and highly differentiated sequencing technology promises significant improvement in raw base accuracy over traditional next generation sequencing products enabling the potential for more precise and sensitive molecular diagnostics. PacBio and Invitae intend to work together to leverage the improved accuracy and sensitivity of SBB chemistry to further advance cancer diagnostics and pathogen detection. Additionally, the parties intend to work together to explore novel methods of integrating SBB chemistry with PacBio's HiFi genomes.

"We believe access to both of these technologies will accelerate the adoption of long read sequencing techniques in clinical whole genome applications, providing deeper insight into the genome and lower the overall cost of analysis," said Christian Henry, CEO and President at PacBio. "Scientists and clinicians rely on accurate short reads and accurate long reads to conduct their science and answer their specific questions. We seek to deliver the most advanced sequencing solutions and are excited that we might expand our development collaboration with Invitae to broadly enable their clinical NGS sequencing."

"In partnering with the PacBio team, we are pleased with our progress toward a new generation of innovative whole genome-based offerings, and look forward to expanding that effort to include the highly differentiated SBB chemistry," said Sean George, Co-Founder, President and Chief Executive Officer of Invitae. "By combining SBB with PacBio's HiFi Sequencing, the opportunity and utility of next generation sequencing technologies can be expanded for patients in the clinical setting with improvement in accuracy and reduction in costs."

The expansion of the collaboration is expected to begin in the second half of 2021 once PacBio's acquisition of Omniome, Inc. is complete.