Tuesday, October 30, 2018
SeraCare Life Sciences, a manufacturer and leading partner to global in vitro diagnostics manufacturers and clinical laboratories, announced today an exclusive partnership with AccuRef Diagnostics, a Division of Applied StemCell, Inc., to market and sell their broad portfolio of CRISPR-engineered cell line reference materials.
SeraCare is the leading provider of reference materials for clinical genomics applications through their Seraseq brand of highly-multiplexed DNA and RNA reference standards that are helping assay developers and clinical laboratories develop, validate and implement next-generation sequencing (NGS)-based assays more quickly and with higher confidence. The SeraCare clinical genomics portfolio offers a range of products serving oncology, non-invasive prenatal testing, inherited disease, and viral genotyping applications.
Applied StemCell created the AccuRef Diagnostics division in 2017 to develop and commercialize the broadest selection of CRISPR-engineered cell-line-based cancer reference materials targeted towards clinical genomics applications. These products, containing clinically-relevant DNA and RNA mutations created through their footprint-free™ CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing technology, support low-to-mid plex clinical genomic applications such as qPCR, digital PCR (dPCR), Sanger, mass spec, and small targeted NGS sequencing gene panels. Unlike other offerings in the market, the use of footprint-free technology ensures precise and efficient editing and higher quality results due to the absence of genomic scars, which interferes with downstream genetic analysis.
"SeraCare is excited to be able to partner with Applied StemCell and add the expansive AccuRef-brand of CRISPR-engineered cell lines and products to our market-leading portfolio of tools for clinical cancer genomic testing," said Trevor Brown, Vice President of Clinical Genomics, SeraCare Life Sciences. "Our Seraseq brand of highly multiplexed reference materials is already the leader in supporting clinical NGS developers and laboratories worldwide. Adding AccuRef's high-quality portfolio of cell line-based cancer reference materials is very complementary, and will help us address the low to mid-plex assay platforms like dPCR and qPCR and provide our customers with more choices and a one-stop shopping experience."
"We are pleased to select SeraCare as our exclusive partner," said Ruhong Jiang, CEO of Applied StemCell. "Our company has worked very hard to develop an extensive portfolio of CRISPR-engineered cell lines with clinically-relevant DNA and RNA variants to support assay developers and clinical lab applications. SeraCare is the right partner to introduce the AccuRef portfolio alongside their existing Seraseq brand products and help us to reach more customers with these high-quality, footprint-free cell line-based products."
Starting in January 2019, customers will be able to purchase AccuRef cancer reference materials directly from SeraCare globally with the exception of China.
