Pharmacy News Article

Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE:A) and Ambry Genetics announced that Ambry is the first organization to achieve Certified Service Provider (CSP) status for Agilent's SureSelect Target Enrichment System for next-generation sequencing.

SureSelect, introduced in February 2009, has been shown to greatly increase the speed and cost-efficiency of next-generation sequencing workflows used in life science research by enabling experiments to focus on genomic regions of interest rather than sequencing the entire genome.

Ambry was awarded CSP status for the SureSelect Target Enrichment System after demonstrating a high level of proficiency using the system with the Illumina Genome Analyzer.

"It's gratifying that a high-quality organization like Ambry is now offering SureSelect to its customers supported by the excellent skills and expertise of their people," said Fred Ernani, Ph.D., Agilent senior product manager for Emerging Genomics Applications. "This is Agilent's flagship target-enrichment product, and Ambry is well-suited for acquainting the genomics community with the efficiencies of SureSelect."

"We at Ambry Genetics continue to invest in cutting-edge next-generation sequencing technologies to help researchers advance their genomic projects," said Ardy Arianpour, director of Business Development, Pharmaceutical Services at Ambry Genetics. "Ambry Genetics is a leader in next-generation sequencing services, and the addition of Agilent's flagship SureSelect System strengthens our sequence-capture capabilities and allows us to expand our prime portfolio for genomics."

The Agilent SureSelect Target Enrichment System is based on an in-solution design, making it automation-friendly and easily scalable from 10 reactions through thousands.

"At Ambry, we use sequence-capture technologies as an efficient and economical approach for targeted sequencing projects on the Illumina GAIIx," said Phillip Gray, Ph.D., Ambry's lead scientist for next-generation sequencing projects. "Agilent's SureSelect Target Enrichment System is a great option for researchers who want to perform sequence capture in solution. The technology platform is flexible and allows researchers to design custom capture libraries using Agilent's eArray software."

Users can design their own custom SureSelect kits using Agilent's eArray online design tool, which contains many key genomes and also lets users upload their own sequences. Because sample requirement is 3 micrograms or less of gDNA, researchers can perform highly targeted next-generation sequencing on very precious samples.