Helicos BioSciences has reported the completion of the sale of a Helicos Single Molecule System to the St Laurent Institute (SLI). The installation of the system is expected to be completed in early February.
The Helicos Genetic Analysis System is the molecule sequencing technology that enables scientists to conduct revolutionary studies to understand genome biology and regulation. Genetic analysis with Helicos’ technology eliminates the biases, complexity and errors introduced by DNA amplification, requires minute amounts of starting material, is amenable to the analysis of degraded nucleic acids, and provides the most quantitatively accurate view of biological samples.
The company also reported an agreement to install a second Helicos Genetic Analysis System at Stanford University. This second system is expected to come on-line in March to meet the growing demand for access to Helicos’ True Single Molecule Sequencing technology.
Georges St Laurent, scientific director of the institute, said: “As a breakthrough in the state of the art for exploring the coding and non-coding transcriptome, Helicos offers the key to unravel the genomic complexity of human chronic diseases. We are very excited to bring the power of Helicos to bear on our urgent biological questions.”
Ron Lowy, chief executive officer of Helicos, said: “We are pleased to add the Saint Laurent Institute to the growing number of leading institutions using the Helicos Single Molecule System to generate breakthrough discoveries. It is becoming clear to many leading research institutions that single molecule genetic analysis is leading to new answers to scientific questions that could only be dreamed of before.
“We are also excited about continued acceleration of experiments at a number of current customers which we expect will lead to the addition of multiple units at those sites. We anticipate this trend will continue going forward.”