Roche invests in Stratos Genomics for 'Sequencing by Expansion'

Swiss pharma major Roche (ROG: SIX) has made a strategic investment in USA-based Stratos Genomics and entered into a research collaboration to support further development of its unique chemistry applied to single molecule sequencing of DNA fragments using protein nanopores.

During this collaboration, a focused research team at Roche will work with Stratos scientists to support the development of efficient, low-cost sample preparation methods for DNA Xpandomers and also improve sequencing performance, by leveraging Roche’s expertise in protein design, polymerase mutagenesis, modified nucleotide chemistries and rare reagent manufacturing.

Stratos Genomics has pioneered a “Sequencing By Expansion” (SBX) method, which is a single molecule detection process that converts DNA into a larger surrogate molecule, called an Xpandomer. These Xpandomer molecules, 10-100 times longer than the original DNA, pass through a nanopore which has a detector to read out the signal. A polymerase can be used to synthesize the Xpandomers from a DNA template by incorporating customized expandable nucleotides and increasing the surrogate molecule through a rapid chemical reaction. SBX’s signal to noise advantage has the potential to enable accurate, high throughput sequencing on reduced cost nanopore systems.