Life Technologies to Collaborate with Boston Children’s Hospital to Develop an Optimized Lab Workflow based on the Ion Proton™ Sequencer
BOSTON, June 20, 2012 /PRNewswire/ — Life Technologies Corporation (NASDAQ: LIFE) and Boston Children’s Hospital, home of the world’s largest pediatric research enterprise, today announced a research and development collaboration to develop an end-to-end genetic sequencing lab workflow based on Life Technologies’ Ion Proton™ Sequencer. The parties plan to collaborate and develop an optimized laboratory infrastructure and lab protocols for an advanced sequencing facility to be built at Boston Children’s in compliance with CLIA and CAP certification standards.
The collaboration expects to benefit from Life Technologies’ leading expertise in DNA sequencing technology and bioinformatics, and Boston Children’s clinical research, genomics and informatics expertise. Dr. David Margulies, director of The Gene Partnership Program at Boston Children’s Hospital said: “This collaboration is an important first step toward providing informed, personalized care for patients whose conditions are difficult to treat. The development of an optimized laboratory infrastructure will support our mission of providing the highest quality, innovative and cost effective care to our patients.”
Dr. Paul Billings, Chief Medical Officer at Life Technologies adds: “We are excited at the prospect of collaborating with the world-renowned experts in pediatric genetic disease at Boston Children’s to develop and demonstrate best practices for using our proprietary Ion Torrent sequencing platform. Partnerships like these are essential to our Medical Sciences strategy as we seek to assist researchers in discovering improved diagnostics and treatments for genetic conditions.”
Ion Proton is for Research Use Only, not for use in diagnostic procedures.
About Boston Children’s
Founded in 1869 as a 20-bed hospital for children, Boston Children’s Hospital has been ranked as one of the nation’s best pediatric hospitals by U.S. News & World Report for the past 21 years. Boston Children’s is the primary pediatric teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School and the largest provider of health care to Massachusetts children. In addition to 395 pediatric and adolescent inpatient beds and 228 outpatient programs, Boston Children’s houses the world’s largest research enterprise based at a pediatric medical center, where its discoveries benefit both children and adults.
More than 1,100 scientists, including nine members of the National Academy of Sciences, 11 members of the Institute of Medicine and nine members of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, comprise Boston Children’s research community. For more information about the hospital visit: www.childrenshospital.org/newsroom.
About Life Technologies
Life Technologies Corporation (NASDAQ: LIFE) is a global biotechnology company with customers in more than 160 countries using its innovative solutions to solve some of today’s most difficult scientific challenges. Quality and innovation are accessible to every lab with its reliable and easy-to-use solutions spanning the biological spectrum with more than 50,000 products for translational research, molecular medicine and diagnostics, stem cell-based therapies, forensics, food safety and animal health. Its systems, reagents and consumables represent some of the most cited brands in scientific research including: Ion Torrent™, Applied Biosystems®, Invitrogen™, GIBCO®, Ambion®, Molecular Probes®, Novex®, and TaqMan®. Life Technologies employs approximately 10,400 people and upholds its ongoing commitment to innovation with more than 4,000 patents and exclusive licenses. LIFE had sales of $3.7 billion in 2011. Visit us at our website: http://www.lifetechnologies.com.
