Life Technologies Partners with German Cancer Research Center to Create World-Class Genome Sequencing Facility
Life Technologies Corporation (NASDAQ: LIFE) and the German Cancer Research Center (Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum or DKFZ), today announced their collaboration to create the National High-Throughput Sequencing Center. This exclusive partnership will create the largest sequencing facility in Germany and the first national sequencing center in Europe dedicated to systems biology.
Prof. Roland Eils
| © dkfz.de
The center will operate 10 SOLiD™ 4 hq systems and will initially sequence 1000 whole human cancer genomes for Germany’s national contribution to the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC). The facility will be partially funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.
Systems biology is the study of an organism as an integrated and interacting network of genes, proteins and biochemical reactions that give rise to life. Often, experiments in systems biology require precise measurements of cellular events over time and assess changes in DNA sequence, RNA transcription or genomic copy number. Therefore, these experiments require substantially more sequencing throughput than experiments that are not examining such dynamic changes in cellular events.
“Our aim is to understand the dynamic complexity of cellular processes on both the DNA and RNA level and how slight perturbations of those pathways contribute to the development of diseases like cancer,” said Professor Roland Eils from DFKZ. “Therefore, it is of the utmost importance to be able to obtain quantitative precise measurements. We are confident that this collaboration with Life Technologies will help us generate the highest quality data possible using the SOLiD™ technology.”
The SOLiD™ System is used globally in experiments to better understand the genetic nature of diseases such as cancer, diabetes, neurological disorders and other diseases. Its throughput, accuracy and flexibility allow researchers to generate the data they need for their experiments.
“Life Technologies is proud to be the technology partner of choice for this new and exciting sequencing center and to be working with DKFZ, a renowned institution in Germany in life science research devoted to studying the complexities of cancer,” said Mark Stevenson, President and Chief Operating Officer for Life Technologies. “This center will be the first facility that will systematically bring high-throughput sequencing technologically into systems biology applications on a large scale.”
The German Cancer Research Center (Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum, DKFZ) with its more than 2,500 employees is the largest biomedical research institute in Germany. At DKFZ, more than 1,000 scientists investigate how cancer develops, identify cancer risk factors and endeavor to find new strategies to prevent people from getting cancer. They develop novel approaches to make tumor diagnosis more precise and treatment of cancer patients more successful. Jointly with Heidelberg University Hospital, DKFZ has established the National Center for Tumor Diseases (NCT) Heidelberg where promising approaches from cancer research are translated into the clinic. The staff of the Cancer Information Service (KID) offers information about the widespread disease of cancer for patients, their families, and the general public. The center is a member of the Helmholtz Association of National Research Centers. Ninety percent of its funding comes from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research and the remaining ten percent from the State of Baden-Württemberg.
