Faster DNA sequencing hope from EU-backed project
Partnership / Biotechnology
Uppsala, Sweden, 24 August 2005
A Swedish biotech start-up, Quiatech AB, is leading an EU-subsidized effort to develop a faster, more accurate system to sequence DNA. Partners are Johann Wolfang Goethe-University in Frankfurt, Tartu University in Estonia, Asper Biotech in Tartu; Fermentas in Vilnius, Lithuania; and Silex Microsystems AB in Järfälla, Sweden.
Company Databank
Quiatech AB
Where: Uppsala, Sweden, http://www.quiatech.com
Field: DNA and RNA synthesis, DNA sequencing, in situ amplification
Stage: In development, licensing some technologies
Vitals: Founded February 2000; Uppsala University spin-out; one facility
Science base: Research with Uppsala University Assoc. Prof. Marek Kwiatkowski
Investors include: SEB Företagsinvest, Scandinavian Life Science Venture, Stiftelsen Industrifonden, InnovationsKapital.
Contact: info@quiatech.com
Background
What is DNA sequencing? National Human Genome Research Institute.
The Evolution of the Revolution. Applied Biosystems.
The DNA Sequencing Business. Business Communications Co.
Reversible Terminators. Quiatech AB.
Automated sequencing of DNA has become a major industry in a global market of $7.8 billion in 2004, according to one market-research firm, Business Communications Co. Key to the technology, allowing researchers to determine the precise order of the four-letter DNA code in scores of organisms, has been a steady drive for faster, cheaper and more accurate systems. What began in the 1970s as a manual chore with finicky radioactive markers reading just a few base pairs at a time has evolved into automated lines with fluorescent dyes and high-power computing that whip through up to 2 million base pairs a day. With the new computing power, more than 100 species, from mouse to man and from arabidopsis to yersinia, have had their genomes sequenced.
But cost and accuracy remain problems. Researchers want to go beyond reading just a few sample organisms to doing more population studies - comparing the slight differences within individuals of the same species that give clues to new medicines and treatments.
The Quiatech project - like others now drawing government support in the U.S. - is trying to extend the "read length": the number of base pairs that can be read in one pass. Typically, automated sequencers read through a genome in chunks of fewer than 1,000 base pairs at a time; figuring out how these chunks fit together, and correcting reading errors, is a costly task. Quiatech is developing a new wrinkle in sequencing that it calls "reversible terminator technology". Like some other sequencers, the experimental Quiatech system gradually builds, or synthesizes, the DNA being studied base-by-base on a chip. But its technique, which uses a novel method of identifying and adding each new base to the chain, could speed processing, the company claims.
The research project, awarded a two-year EU grant, pulls together specialists from two universities and four companies, scattered over four countries. Andrew Griffiths, of the Institut de Science et d'Ingénierie Supramoléculaires (ISIS) in Strasbourg, France, is the project's scientific advisor. The project, led by Quiatech, began 30 August 2005.
Quiatech is a five-year-old spin-off from Sweden's Uppsala University. Its products, in genetic analysis, molecular diagnostics and gene-based therapeutics, are based on research and patents developed by Marek Kwiatkowski, at Uppsala's Rudbeck Laboratory. To fund its growth, the company recently completed a 54 million Swedish kroner private placement with four funds, SEB Företagsinvest, Scandinavian Life Science Venture, Stiftelsen Industrifonden and InnovationsKapital.
