Saturday November 21 2009 | Biotechnology feed | All feeds
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Saturday November 21 2009 | Biotechnology feed | All feeds
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Mr.
West will be responsible for leading the Company through product launch and
subsequent corporate growth. He succeeds Nick McCooke, who has led Solexa
through a very successful period of early development. Commenting
on his initial experience at Solexa, Mr West said: “On
joining Solexa, I have been impressed with how far it has progressed toward
practical implementation. I have
seen numerous advanced technologies proposed for DNA analysis since the early
1980’s and almost none have reached the market.
Solexa, on the other hand, has quietly and carefully worked on the core
chemistry and enzymology it needs and has made remarkable progress.
Its recent insightful acquisition of DNA cluster technology has now
closed the signal-to-noise gap it faced, and should enable shipments in 2005.
“While
other companies propose stretching the microtiter plate concept to the limit
with expensive microfluidic designs, Solexa has moved directly to the
molecular level. This promises
thousand fold higher density than the finest microfluidic chambers, with none
of the complexity.” Mr
West joined Solexa from Applied Biosystems, Inc. (AB) where he was Vice
President of DNA Platforms. This included responsibility for the company’s
instrument and reagent products for DNA sequencing, gene expression,
genotyping, PCR and DNA synthesis. His
group developed and launched the instruments that now populate virtually all
genome sequencing centers worldwide. He
also had business responsibility for AB’s first gene expression array
system, for its real-time PCR instruments, and for its microfluidic PCR
products. During
his 22 years in the industry, Mr. West has held senior positions, including
President of Princeton Instruments, Inc., President and Founder of
BioAutomation, Inc. and Marketing Director for Microfluidics at Microcosm
Technologies, Inc. During Mr.
West’s term at Princeton Instruments, the company introduced the first low
light imaging system for single molecule fluorescence - and Solexa, at that
time a startup, bought one of the first units.
Mr. West holds BS and MS degrees in engineering from MIT and an MBA in
Finance from the Welcoming
Mr West to the Company and the Board, Dr Tim Rink, Solexa’s Chairman said: “John
brings a wealth of skills and experience that will be vital to Solexa as it
commercialises its advanced genetic analysis technology. He brings both large
company organisation and process experience and smaller company
entrepreneurial leadership background. He
has built market-leading businesses with dramatic revenue growth in market and
technology areas very relevant to Solexa’s aims. “On
behalf of the board and the investors I would also like to thank Nick McCooke
for his able stewardship and hard work that has brought Solexa so far, so
quickly.” Mr
McCooke will remain with the Company for an interim period in order to effect
a smooth transition. - ends -
For
more information, please contact: At
Northbank Communications Rebecca
Todd, Account Manager, Tel:
+44 (0)20 7886 8157, Mobile: +44 (0)7801 573073, E-mail:
r.todd@northbankcommunications.com
Sue
Charles, CEO, Tel: +44 (0)20 7886 8152, Mobile:
+44 (0)7968 726585, E-mail:
s.charles@northbankcommunications.com At
Solexa In
In
Europe: Simon Bennett, Business Development, Tel: +44 (0)1799 532 300, About
Solexa Solexa’s
ultimate goal is to develop systems capable of individual human genome
analysis within the financial constraints of the medical diagnostic industry.
This would transform genetic diagnostics from target-specific
confirmatory tests (niche products) into ubiquitous hypothesis-free baseline
medical data. The
ability to read the whole genome sequence and/or gene expression profiles of
individuals, quickly and economically, will also be a fundamental tool in the
development of the biological and medical sciences in the 21st
century.
Solexa
is a private company developing instrument and reagent systems based on single
molecule array technology. In
this technology, arrays are formed by depositing a dense lawn of molecules on
a surface similar to a microscope slide.
The individual molecules are then analysed in place, with the spatial
resolution of the array determined by the size of the molecules rather than by
a photolithographically defined microfluidic cell or hybridisation pixel.
This advantage is extended by use of a novel chemistry that builds up
data, base-by-base, at each molecule. Compared
with conventional arrays, that provide a single reading at each location, this
gives single molecule arrays a third dimension, greatly expanding the amount
of data generated per array. With
this technology, single molecule arrays are expected to provide data densities
approximately a thousand fold higher than those of arrays based on either
hybridisation or micro-PCR wells. Detection
of single molecules is extremely challenging technologically.
While Solexa has made significant progress towards pure single molecule
arrays as its ultimate goal, it has acquired cluster technology – in which
PCR is used to amplify individual molecules - to let it reach market much more
quickly. Solexa is the only
company with access to both pure single molecule and amplified single molecule
array platform technologies. This
establishes a roadmap for successful early product launch with a sustained
price / performance advantage into the future. With
the potential to sequence as many as a billion separate DNA molecules in
parallel, Solexa’s technology is expected to allow a single instrument to
re-sequence a complete human genome at ten fold coverage in ten days.
With this throughput, the technology can also potentially support
analysis of over a thousand whole-genome gene expression profiles in parallel
on a single instrument. This
throughput, tremendously valuable in its own right, also provides an
unprecedented cost advantage in both areas of genetic analysis. Since
Solexa arrays are based on analysis of individual molecules, the amount of
material needed for each analysis is vanishingly small.
This may enable genome-scale analysis from as little as a few cells.
This sensitivity level in itself is expected to enable new experiments,
with cancer and stem cell samples in particular.
Solexa
was spun out of |
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