NEW YORK – Bio-Rad Laboratories and NuProbe USA announced on Friday that they have signed a licensing and development agreement for NuProbe's Blocker Displacement Amplification technology for allele enrichment.
Under the terms of the agreement, NuProbe will exclusively license its allele enrichment technologies to Bio-Rad for the development of multiplexed digital PCR assays.
In a statement, the firms said the technology will help to advance Bio-Rad's menu of products in oncology, "where highly sensitive and multiplexed mutation detection assays aid translational research, therapy selection, and disease monitoring."
NuProbe USA, a subsidiary of parent company NuProbe Global, has developed and optimized the Blocker Displacement Amplification technology as a PCR method in which variant DNA alleles are enriched over one thousandfold over wild-type alleles. The BDA technology was experimentally validated on hundreds of clinical samples across multiple platforms, the firms also said, including qPCR, digital PCR, Sanger sequencing, next-generation sequencing, and nanopore sequencing.
"The excellent quantitation abilities of Bio-Rad's digital PCR platforms are a great fit for NuProbe's allele enrichment technologies," said Yingshuang Chai, cofounder and CEO of China-based NuProbe Global.
"We are excited to work with Bio-Rad in applying our blocker displacement amplification technology to Droplet Digital PCR," said David Zhang, cofounder and CEO of NuProbe USA. "We remain committed to sustained innovation driving new molecular technologies, and to securing partnerships with industry leaders to broaden the reach and impact of these technologies."
Simon May, Bio-Rad's executive VP and president of Life Sciences, said the firm is "committed to providing oncology researchers with technologies that enable everything from biomarker discovery to clinical trials and patient monitoring of minimal residual disease," adding, "We look forward to working with NuProbe USA to develop the next generation of highly multiplexed digital PCR assays as part of our expanding oncology offering."
Bio-Rad recently launched a six-color Droplet Digital PCR system, called the QX600.