When a prominent scientific society holds an annual meeting, you can expect that the meeting’s conference program and exhibit hall will attract many interested companies. Moreover, the meeting will prove a convenient opportunity to highlight some current developments for these companies. Well, the annual meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) is no different.
Here at General, we’ve noticed that several companies we’ve covered recently have announced their attendance at the current ASHG meeting. These companies include NanoString Technologies, Quantum-Si and Ultima Genomics.
NanoString Technologies
NanoString, a spatial biology company, says it “provides an ecosystem of innovative discovery and translational research solutions that enable customers to map the universe of biology.” More details about NanoString can be found at General The website’s NanoString archive. For example, the company has been discussed in several cases General Essays on spatial biology. Also, we’ve featured an interview with NanoString’s Chief Science Officer, Joseph M. Bechem, Ph.D.
at ASHG, NanoString at booth 1523. In addition, the company will present an educational session (“In-depth, subcellular and ligand-receptor maps from the Spatial Atlas of Human Anatomy (SAHA) project”) and four posters (each describing applications driven by one of the nanostringing platforms One of the three NanoString speakers at the event will be none other than Beecham.
A few details about the company’s educational session are available on the NanoString website: “Log in [of the SAHA initiative] To advance our knowledge of spatial biology is to create a comprehensive open source, spatial reference standard that can be accessed by researchers around the world. The NanoString CosMx™ Spatial Molecular Imager (SMI) offers comprehensive spatial solutions for single cell spatial imaging (identifying rare cell types and capturing cell interactions) and GeoMx.® Digital Spatial Profiler (DSP) tissue biology-guided whole transcriptome profiling for large-scale translational studies. The AtoMx™ Spatial Informatics Platform (SIP) solves the challenge of managing large spatial datasets using an open, cost-effective, cloud-based database.
Quantum – If
Quantum-C, a self-proclaimed protein sequencing company, has a suite of technologies focused on “transforming proteomics.” The semiconductor chip, which is fundamental to the company’s technology, will “enable the next generation of single-molecule protein sequencing and digitize proteomic research to advance drug discovery and diagnostics beyond what is possible with DNA sequencing.”
More details about Quantum-Si can be found at General Quantum-C archive of the web, highlighting articles published in 2023. To dive a little deeper, go back to 2021. Jane Edge Profile of Jonathan Rothberg, PhD, Founder of Quantum-C. In his profile (“Rothberg Returns: Quantum-Si Aims to Turn Proteomics Digital”), Rothberg is quoted as saying: “It’s time to use it. The beautiful thing is that the chips are extremely precise when measuring, so we can distinguish between different amino acids. Even between modified amino acids.” We can. When you’re doing drug development for a big pharmaceutical company, you want to know which proteins are modified and we can see those modifications.
ASHG will be at Quantum-Si Booth 115, showcasing Platinum™, the next-generation benchtop protein sequencing instrument, and sharing its vision for transforming genomics and proteomics research. Quantum-C Chief Commercial Officer Grace Johnston, PhD, and CEO Jeff Hawkins will be on hand to discuss the company’s technology and the critical importance of next-generation protein sequencing and proteomics.
Also, on Thursday, November 2, at 4:30 p.m., Quantum-C scientists will present: Unleashing Next-Generation Protein Sequencing™ with Platinum™: How It Will Transform Genomics and Proteomics Research.
Ultima Genomics
Ultima Genomics, a developer of a new ultra-high-throughput sequencing architecture, has attracted a lot of attention since the company released the UG100 platform. According to the BioArchives preprint, the company’s scientists say the UG100 is “a novel mass-parallel sequencing platform with an open flow cell design on a circular wafer with a large surface area and mostly natural nucleotides that allow optical endpoint detection without switchable terminators.”
A flow cell contains a dense series of beads, and as it rotates, the reagents distributed near the center are distributed over it by centrifugal force. An optical scan of the rotating surface is then continuously performed in a process similar to that used to read a compact disc.
For more details about UG100 and Ultima Genomics, visit General Website Ultima Genomics Archive. In particular, see a recent profile of Ultima CEO Gilad Almoji, Ph.D., who offers extensive comments. For example, he explained the company’s motto, “Unleash the power of genomics at scale.”
“I’ve yet to find a field where people don’t want more information,” Almogi said. “Each one [person] It will have a whole genome sequence – that’s a given. But, he added, that’s not how a person’s lineage—the DNA sequence they were born with—is changing. What’s going on with your mutation profile or methylation profile – that’s not static. And that data, Almogy emphasized, will become a bigger and bigger part of healthcare.
At ASHG, Ultima will be at booth 1823, and will be speaking at an industry education session titled “Advancing Genomics at Scale.” The company offers new data in a variety of applications with several early access customers.
Sean Zhao of the Baylor College of Medicine will present a talk entitled “Clinical utility of deep-RNAseq in Mendelian disorder diagnostics” using data generated at Baylor using the UG100 early access instrument. Alternative spelling patterns beyond what is commonly seen with the depth of the current standard order.
Betty Liu of the Greenleaf Laboratory at Stanford University highlights the use of Ultima technology to systematically investigate differential transcription (TF) levels by accessibility and gene expression using high-throughput ATAC-seq.
Watchmaker Genomics demonstrates the detection of gene fusions by cost-effective whole-transcript sequencing using the optimized Watchmaker RNA Library Prep Kit.
Ultima offers improvements in germline short-range sequencing and transcriptome sequencing from whole-genome sequencing, demonstrating that the sequencing method is a robust and cost-effective method that holds promise for research and clinical applications. In collaboration with Variantyx, these methods are applied to whole genome sequencing of clinical samples to accurately identify common pathogenic clinical variants.