Columbia University licenses next-generation DNA sequencing technology

Columbia University announces today that it recently executed an exclusive license agreement for a next generation DNA sequencing technology to Intelligent Bio-Systems (IBS), Inc. This innovative DNA-sequencing technology was invented by Dr. Jingyue Ju, professor of Chemical Engineering and head of DNA Sequencing and Chemical Biology at the Judith P. Sulzberger, M.D. Columbia Genome Center at Columbia University. The fundamentals of this new technology are being published on-line today by in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). This research paper describes the details of the Sequencing by Synthesis Chemistry and how the approach overcomes accuracy limitations of other next generation DNA sequencing systems.

It was also recently announced that Columbia University in collaboration with the Waltham, Mass. based Intelligent Bio-Systems, is one of only two recipients of the Near-Term Technology Development for Genome Sequencing grants from the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) (www.genome.gov/19518500). This grant of $425,000 is for the development of a "High-Throughput DNA Sequencing by Synthesis Platform."

"The collaboration between Dr. Ju at Columbia and Intelligent Bio-Systems is an important development to bring this powerful technology to both researchers and clinicians in the near future," said Dr. Steven Gordon, Chief Executive Officer at IBS. "Completing the license was a key step in uniting Dr. Ju's seminal sequencing chemistry and IBS's molecular biology and engineering expertise. We are poised to offer a simple, cost effective platform that will enable many researchers and clinicians to use this next-generation DNA sequencing technology in their own laboratories."

Dr. Ju is a prolific inventor of new technologies for applications in genomics using chemistry and molecular engineering approaches. He is credited with being one of the primary inventors of the fluorescent energy transfer chemistry for 4-color Sanger sequencing being used by virtually all of the current generations of DNA sequencers that were used to complete the Human Genome Project.

Source : Columbia University Medical Center