Almac Group Invests in Cutting Edge Next Generation Sequencing Capabilities for Bio Pharma Clients

Almac Diagnostic Services, a global stratified medicine company specialising in biomarker driven clinical trials, has made a significant investment in a new Illumina NovaSeq 6000 sequencer which will benefit Biopharma clients’ biomarker discovery and clinical trial projects.

The addition of the NovaSeq’s powerful processing capabilities to Almac’s existing range of NGS platform offerings allows for larger sample runs, greater read depth and faster speeds. The new instrument will ultimately reduce sample turnaround times and increase variant detection quality and accuracy for clients.

With the NovaSeq, Almac will be able to sequence the transcriptomes of up to ~384 samples, per run (dual flow cell, 50M reads per sample) in a timeframe as short as 36 hours.  The NovaSeq provides scalable throughput and flexibility for virtually any sequencing method, genome, and scale of project.  To accommodate NovaSeq’s high capacity and efficiency, Almac has also invested in appropriate informatics infrastructure and installed high speed uplinks to cloud based providers.

The NovaSeq will form an integral part of Almac’s current DNA and RNA Sequencing offerings and future offerings for Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS) and Whole Exome Sequencing (WES).  Almac Diagnostic Services already has extensive expertise in Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) technology and Bioinformatics. The company offers a customisable solution that allows clients to tailor their diagnostic requirements across multiple platforms and chemistry options to suit their specific translational research or clinical trial needs.

Michael Sloan, Global VP of Commercial Operations, Almac Diagnostic Services said: “We are excited about the potential benefits the NovaSeq will be able to bring to our customers with its sequencing capabilities enhancing our current DNA and RNA NGS panel offerings to the market. We are positioning ourselves at the cutting edge of NGS diagnostics and the investment in this new NGS platform will help Almac to continue to play a leading role within stratified medicine.”     

The NovaSeq will also support Almac Diagnostic Services new unique gene expression report, claraT, which will be launched to market at ESMO 2018 in Munich in October. claraT is a unique software-driven solution, classifying biologically relevant gene expression signatures into a comprehensive, easy-to-interpret report for cancer research / biomarker discovery.  

For more information on Almac Diagnostic Services DNA and RNA NGS Panels offerings go to: https://www.almacgroup.com/diagnostics/clinical-trial-solutions/

For more information and to register an interest in Almac’s upcoming claraT gene expression report: https://www.almacgroup.com/diagnostics/clarat-total-mrna-report/

About Almac Diagnostic Services
Almac Diagnostic Services is a global stratified medicine company specialising in biomarker driven clinical trials. The company is focused on the discovery, development and commercialisation of diagnostic and companion diagnostic tests. We partner with biopharma companies to provide solutions ranging from biomarker discovery to CDx development including regulatory submissions and commercialisation. We also facilitate biomarker clinical trial management and clinical test delivery from our CLIA-accredited labs. The tests developed at Almac Diagnostic Services have a wide range of applications including patient selection, and are utilised in phase I to phase III registrational clinical trials. For more information visit: www.almacgroup.com/diagnostics.  

About Almac Group
A unique culture delivering exceptional solutions

The Almac Group is an established contract development and manufacturing organisation providing an extensive range of integrated services across the drug development lifecycle to the pharmaceutical and biotech sectors globally.

Our innovative services range from R&D, biomarker discovery development and commercialisation, API manufacture, formulation development, clinical trial supply, IRT (IVRS/IWRS) through to commercial-scale manufacture.

The international company is a privately owned organisation that has grown organically over the past five decades now employing over 5,000 highly skilled personnel across 17 facilities including Europe, the US and Asia. Click here to view our facilities. We have a global reputation for excellence built over 50 years of client service, delivering expertise right across the drug development lifecycle and offering a tailored solution to each of our clients.