Discovery Life Sciences Expands their PacBio Center of Excellence to Become One of the Largest Commercial Long Read Sequencing Services Laboratories in the World

Solidifying Discovery's Role as a Leader in Long Read Sequencing and Creating Large-Scale Long Read and Short Read Sequencing Services

HUNTSVILLE, Ala., Nov. 3, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Discovery Life Sciences™ (Discovery), a global leader in biospecimen solutions, genomic, cell, and immunohistochemistry (IHC) services, announces the expansion of their HudsonAlpha Discovery™ PacBio Center of Excellence with the purchase of additional Sequel^® II Systems.  The new systems, powered by Single Molecule, Real-Time (SMRT^®) Sequencing technology, produce highly accurate long reads, known as HiFi reads, and support the latest PacBio HiFi sequencing applications.

The investment makes Discovery one of the largest commercial providers of long read next generation sequencing services for research, development and clinical trial applications — with capacity and proven experience for large-scale projects including the NIH All of Us Research Program. HudsonAlpha Discovery is Discovery Life Science's sequencing and bioinformatics laboratory that provides a suite of long-read, short-read and strand-specific sequencing technologies – including Pacific Biosciences, Illumina NovaSeq, 10x Genomic, Chromium, and Oxford Nanopore platforms, optical mapping, and variant discovery algorithms.

Long-read sequencing improves de novo assembly, increases variant detection for whole genome sequencing, comprehensively maps difficult genomic regions, identifies transcript isoforms and elucidates complex disease-causing elements such as repeat expansions and structural variants that short read technologies miss. These advantages are driving increased adoption of long read sequencing technologies, especially in the field of oncology. To meet the rising demand with scaled, affordable solutions, Discovery now delivers expanded large-scale long read genomic sequencing services, integrated with its comprehensive platform that includes biospecimen solutions, short read sequencing, nucleic acid isolation, IHC and flow cytometry services.

"HudsonAlpha Discovery is uniquely positioned to support the growing need for large-scale long read sequencing in cancer, drug, and diagnostic research and development," said Dr. Shawn Levy, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer Discovery Life Sciences. "Our expertise is centered on high-throughput sequencing, workflow optimization, and developing cutting-edge analytical pipelines in support of global, large-scale clinical trial programs."

"PacBio is pleased to support HudsonAlpha Discovery, a leading sequencing service provider, in expanding their HiFi sequencing capacity to meet the growing demand for long-read sequencing projects," said Chris Siepert, VP Sales and Support for the Americas and Europe at PacBio. "We are looking forward to further expanding our collaboration with Discovery to support a full suite of HiFi sequencing applications and genetic analysis methods to help advance research relating to the diagnosis and treatment of disease, including cancer."

About Discovery Life Sciences
Discovery Life Sciences is the global market leader in biospecimen analysis, procurement, distribution, and scientific services for the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and diagnostics industries. HudsonAlpha Discovery is Discovery's globally recognized sequencing and bioinformatics division that leverages the most current genomic research technologies to comprehensively support discovery, translational, and clinical research. Driven by science, the Discovery team engages with customers in an innovative, consultative approach to overcoming obstacles and reaching a faster end result. We are Science at your Service™! For more information, visit dls.com.

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SOURCE Discovery Life Sciences