GE Healthcare Life Sciences to manufacture RevoluGen’s Fire Monkey / Fire Flower product for enabling long-read DNA sequencing

London, UK – 2 March 2020 – The UK genomic tools developer, RevoluGen Ltd., has entered into a global manufacturing arrangement with GE Healthcare Life Sciences which will ensure the supply chain for its world leading Fire Monkey / Fire Flower High Molecular Weight DNA (HMW-DNA) extraction and purification product. 

Under the non-exclusive agreement, GE Healthcare Life Sciences will manufacture RevoluGen's Fire Monkey / Fire Flower product. The Fire Monkey / Fire Flower kit uses spin columns to both extract High Molecular Weight DNA with an average length of 100 kb or more from animal and bacterial cells and to remove the fragments of DNA smaller than 10 kb. The longer the DNA that can be extracted intact, the better any subsequent long genomic sequencing reads can be. For example, using RevoluGen’s Fire Monkey / Fire Flower kit to prepare certain bacterial samples has already been shown to improve the sequencing results obtained from Oxford Nanopore Technologies MinIon product by over 100%.

Reading the genome of all living things is probably inevitable but still in its early days and this massively important technological innovation is growing in importance as the recent corona virus outbreak has highlighted. The first step in all genomic work involves extracting the genetic material from within the living organism. Long-read sequencing is an evolving and rapidly growing sector of the whole sequencing market. Longer starting material allows for longer sequencing reads. Better data leads to more knowledge and this drives real scientific progress.

"With this manufacturing agreement we will be able to ensure a high quality supply of our world leading Fire Monkey / Fire Flower product from a source sufficiently flexible to be able to cope with any global scale up in demand.” said RevoluGen CEO Pieter Haitsma Mulier. 

“The improved data from long-read sequencing is accelerating how we understand disease and design effective treatments,” said Gabriel Fernandez de Pierola, Head of Genomics & Diagnostic Solutions at GE Healthcare Life Sciences. “With more genomics companies looking to sequence long DNA there is an increasing need to extract high molecular weight samples. I am pleased to enter into a manufacturing deal for RevoluGen’s product to address this significant market need and ultimately enable scientific progress.”