Development of Nano-Sized Ugelstad Beads for Clinical Sequencing and Point of Care Diagnostics

Technology background: The ION Torrent sequencing technology is based on a semiconductor chip similar to the chip used in digital cameras. The difference is that the chip detects a pH change and not light. The chip has millions of wells to which polymer particles are loaded. Each particle has hundreds of thousands of identical copies of single stranded DNA with sizes from 100 to 600 basepairs. One and one nucleotide are flowed over the chip to synthesize a copy of the DNA on the bead. If the nucleotide i s the correct, protons are produced, and the DNA base is identified as the correct one. Market: Ion torrent sequencers are today the second largest sequencing platform in the world after Illuminas Hi Seq. The main advantage of ION torrent is the simpli city and the speed of sequencing, the technology have reduced a normal sequencing run from a week to 4 hours. The development will is focused on increasing the amount of DNA that can be sequenced on a chip. Products: The first PGM platform was launched in 2012 with chips that had 1.5 to 11 million wells and were used for targeted sequencing and sequencing small genomes like bacteria. The second instrument, the Proton 1 was launched in 2013 and had microchips with 165 million wells and a throughput larg e enough (10 GB with 99% accuracy) to sequence the whole exome. We are now developing beads for the Proton 2 chip that will have 665 million wells in one chip. A new instrumentcalled Ion S5 that simplifies and speeds up the sequencing workflow and increases the sequencing accuracy was launched October 2015. Life Technologies AS (Part of Thermo Fisher Scientific) in Norway delivers monosized beads based on the Ugelstad technology. Monosized beads have the advantage of being tailor made with sizes that fit exactly into the wells. The beads are considered the second most important part of the instrument after the chip.