Newswise BIRMINGHAM, Ala. The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) today announced that Illumina Inc. has licensed the rights to a DNA sequencing technology developed by a UAB microbiologist and a University of Washington physicist.

The patent-licensing deal revolves around nanopores first studied as potential chinks in the armor of the tuberculosis bacteria, but now part of efforts to make sequencing even faster and cheaper.

Sequencing reveals genetic variations, which partly determine each persons risk for many diseases as well as which drugs will work for him or her. Cancer centers are already sequencing tumors in search of variations that make some resistant to chemotherapy. Global sequencing studies seek to find the genetic contributors to conditions such as autism and diabetes.

Widespread access to genetic information will improve medical care worldwide; but in order to become part of daily, personalized medicine, DNA sequencing methods will need to become faster and cheaper, said Michael Niederweis, Ph.D., a microbiology professor in the UAB School of Medicine and one of two researchers who developed the technology. Our nanopore technology promises to achieve that, and we believe Illumina can transform our experimental system into a pioneering commercial technology.

While the terms of the deal are confidential, the license gives Illumina exclusive worldwide rights to develop and market the nanopore DNA sequencing technology developed by Jens Gundlach, Ph.D., a professor of physics at the University of Washington (UW), Niederweis and their teams. The technology is protected by pending patent applications co-owned by the UAB Research Foundation and UW.

Many companies and universities are looking at the potential of nanopore technology, but the technology developed by Drs. Niederweis and Gundlach is among the most promising, said Christian Henry, senior vice president and general manager of Illuminas Genomics Solutions business.

Path to a simpler sequencing technology In every human cell, the blueprint for the body is encoded in chains of molecules called deoxyribonucleic acids or DNA. DNA chains are, in turn, composed of nucleotides, each of which includes one of four bases adenine, thymine, guanine or cytosine. These bases serve as the letters making up the genetic code, and sequencing methods determine their precise order.

It took The Human Genome Project 10 years and cost $3 billion to sequence the first complete set of genetic information, or genome, for one human, with the results announced in 2003. That same feat today takes a couple of days and costs about $4,000. Dramatic improvements in template preparation, sequencing strategies and image processing made this astounding leap possible in recent years, but DNA sequencing has yet to cross the threshold that will make it part of everyday medicine: to decode a patients genome within hours for less than a thousand dollars.

Many labs are looking for ways to replace the current processes with simpler, cheaper ones. One such approach is nanopore sequencing, which employs a pore just large enough for a DNA strand to slip through.

As the molecule passes through the pore, it partially blocks an electrical current. This enables each of the four DNA bases to generate a unique electrical signal and allows the system to identify the sequence. Bacteria evolved to have such pores in their outer membranes because they efficiently let in nearby nutrients sugars, phosphates and amino acids that happen to be about the same size as a single DNA nucleotide.

Read more:
Licensing Deal Marks Coming of Age for UAB-UW Nanopore Sequencing Technology

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