MOUNTAIN VIEW, USA - Complete Genomics Inc. (Nasdaq:GNOM), the whole human genome sequencing company, today announced that it has signed four new distributor agreements with well-established Asia-Pacific life sciences companies — GeneWorks Pty Ltd. In Australia, Cyagen Biosciences in China, AR Brown Co. Ltd. in Japan, and BML in Korea — to better serve customers in those regions. These distributors will complement Complete Genomics' high-quality sequencing by enhancing service accessibility, convenience, and the efficient delivery of data to its regional customers.
The dealers bring experience in sample acquisition, handling and management, and data analysis and bioinformatics. These arrangements will provide Complete Genomics‘ customers with sample preparation assistance at the beginning of the sequencing process and additional data analysis, if required, at the end to maximize the discovery potential of Complete Genomics’ highly accurate data.
“We are excited to see demand growing for our high-quality sequencing service in the Asia-Pacific region,” said Dan Floerke, director of Market Development, Asia-Pacific at Complete Genomics. “With the support of our distributors, our goal is to deliver the best possible service to the customers in this region by providing easy access to our whole genome sequencing data and helping to shorten their discovery times.”
Complete Genomics‘ services provide customers with further insights into the genetic underpinnings of human diseases, including complex diseases such as cancer. For the genomes delivered to their customers in the first quarter, the median exome call rates were above 98 percent and median genome call rates above 96 percent — both industry-leading metrics. More than 35 percent of the 5,000 genomes that the company has sequenced to date have been cancer genomes. In addition, when the allele fraction was 20 percent, Complete Genomics’ cancer sequencing pipeline achieved 92 percent relative sensitivity.
Complete Genomics is able to support its accuracy claims by publicly releasing the data for review. In February 2011, Complete Genomics publicly released 60 genomes and has since updated the data set with an additional 13 genomes, including two tumor-normal pairs. With this dataset, researchers have access to a comprehensive collection of small variations in the diversity panel, reporting of structural variation breakpoints composed into events, and visualization of genome-wide genomic alterations summarized in Circos plots. In addition, a number of papers have been published based on this data.
