Ion Torrent Announces Ion Personal Genome Machine (PGM) Sequencer Grant Program for Europe

GUILFORD, Conn. and SAN FRANCISCO, June 11 /PRNewswire/ -- Ion Torrent today announced that it is extending its Ion PGM Sequencer Grant Program to Europe, and will award two sequencers to scientists there in the second half of 2010. This spring Ion Torrent received hundreds of grant proposals from scientists in North America, and in April two winners were each awarded an Ion PGM sequencer.

See the Ion PGM sequencer in person at the ESHG Conference in Gothenburg, Sweden, June 12–15, at booth B328.  To apply for a grant, click here (http://www.iontorrent.com/grant-program).

Two grants will be awarded to European scientists under the program. The Dr. James Watson Healthcare Grant will be awarded to the outstanding proposal that addresses human health, in recognition of Dr. Watson's interest in healthcare issues. The Dr. Gordon Moore Environment Grant will be awarded to the outstanding proposal that addresses environmental, ecological or evolutionary issues, areas of study that the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation have long supported.

As part of their grant, each of the winning scientists will receive a perpetual license to the DNASTAR® SeqMan NGen assembly software and the CLC bio Genomics Workbench bioinformatics software.

The Ion PGM Sequencer Grant Program is designed to foster the development of new applications that leverage the Ion PGM sequencer's unprecedented speed, scalability and low cost. Under the program, applicants fill out a simple grant form—a few hundred words—describing the experiment they would do with an Ion PGM sequencer. The applicants' goal should be to address a problem that was intractable using previous technologies.

The ideal application should:

• Take advantage of the Ion PGM sequencer's ability to do runs in one to two hours
• Take advantage of the Ion PGM sequencer's accessibility: its push-button simplicity, small footprint (about the size of a desktop printer) and affordability (approximately euro 50,000 for the instrument, euro 500 per chip)
• Focus on applications that most benefit from a few million reads of 100 to 200 bases
• Enable a significant adoption of Ion semiconductor sequencing technology
• Lead to an ongoing application of Ion Torrent Technology™ with a significant societal benefit, such as expanding our understanding of the genetic causes and molecular basis of disease or addressing critical environmental, ecological or evolutionary issues.

The application window will close on Sept. 15, and the Ion PGM sequencer will be delivered to the winners when Ion Torrent officially launches the product in 2010. The first 50 applicants will receive a free Ion Torrent T-shirt.

The grant submissions will be judged on the merit of their ideas. The judges for the competition are Ion Torrent Founder, Chairman and CEO Dr. Jonathan Rothberg, Dr. Mathias Uhlen, Dr. George Church and the Dr. Svante Paabo laboratory.

To apply, go to: http://www.iontorrent.com/grant-program

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About Ion Torrent

Ion Torrent has developed a DNA sequencing system that directly translates chemical signals (A, C, G, T) into digital information (0, 1) on a semiconductor chip. The result is a sequencing system that is simpler, faster, less expensive and more scalable than any other technology available. Because Ion Torrent produces its proprietary semiconductor chips in standard CMOS factories, it leverages the $1 trillion investment that has been made in the semiconductor industry. Ion Torrent uniquely and directly benefits from four decades of exponential improvement in semiconductor technology, expressed as Moore's Law. Ion Torrent will launch the Ion Personal Genome Machine sequencer in 2010. Ion Torrent was founded in August 2007 by Dr. Jonathan M. Rothberg, who pioneered high-speed, massively parallel DNA sequencing. Ion Torrent is based in Guilford, Connecticut, with an office in South San Francisco. For more information about Ion Torrent, visit www.iontorrent.com.

SOURCE Ion Torrent