Life Technologies Launches Two Ion AmpliSeq™ Community Panel Designs: Ion AmpliSeq™ BRCA1 and BRCA2 Panel and the Ion AmpliSeq™ Colon & Lung Cancer Panel

CARLSBAD, Calif., April 2, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Life Technologies Corporation (NASDAQ: LIFE) today announced it launched two Ion AmpliSeq™ Community Panels: the Ion AmpliSeq™ BRCA1 and BRCA2 Panel design and the Ion AmpliSeq™ Colon and Lung Cancer Panel design.

The BRCA panel analyzes the coding regions of the tumor suppressor genes BRCA1 and BRCA2, which have been implicated in hereditary breast and ovarian cancers. The colon and lung panel analyzes more than 500 mutations in 22 associated genes, using the power and simplicity of the established Ion AmpliSeq™ technology. Significant and ongoing improvements with Ion sequencing have enabled these Ion AmpliSeq™ panels to accurately call all variants of interest, including those within difficult sequence contexts.

Life Technologies is hosting three talks at the American Association of Cancer Research (AACR) on Saturday, April 6 about the use of Ion AmpliSeq™ panels in clinical research:

• Nicola Normanno, MD, Centro Ricerche Oncologiche di Mercogliano, Avellino, Italy, will discuss the development of the Ion AmpliSeq™ Lung and Colon Community Panel and the collaborative efforts of the eight-member European consortia.
• Marina Nikiforova, MD, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania will discuss using the Ion AmpliSeq™ RNA Panels for detection of chromosomal rearrangements in thyroid cancer research.
• Six panelists will discuss implementing Ion AmpliSeq™ Cancer Gene Panels on the Ion PGM™ System for clinical research.

Ion AmpliSeq™ Community Panels are developed by leading scientists who draw on their expertise in a specific disease area to develop the panels. They verify the content using samples that were previously screened using orthogonal technologies. The panel designs are then made available to the entire scientific community on ampliseq.com.

Ion AmpliSeq™ Community Panels are built on the same breakthrough technology that powers the Ion AmpliSeq™ Ready-to-Use Panels and the Ion AmpliSeq™ Custom Panels. Like all Ion AmpliSeq™ technology, the community panels require just 10 ng of DNA input per primer pool, about 25-fold less than alternative gene panel approaches. The Ion AmpliSeq™ workflow is a simple PCR reaction coupled with rapid Ion semiconductor sequencing, enabling researchers to go from DNA to results in less than 24 hours.

The Ion AmpliSeq™ BRCA1 and BRCA2 panels were developed by Drs. Marjolijn Ligtenberg and Arjen Mensenkamp from Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, The Netherlands, and with Drs. Jose Carlos Machado and Jose Luis Costa from The Institute of Molecular Pathology and Immunology of the University of Porto. In addition to these leading researchers in the field, a global consortium will further test the panel, with plans to validate and implement it in their labs.

"Ion AmpliSeq™ technology has allowed us to substantially improve the turnaround time and cost of sequencing these important genes," said Costa. "The methodology proved robust enough to call even difficult mutations, including long homopolymers, in these two genes."

"The Ion AmpliSeq™ BRCA panel enabled us to develop a quick and easy high-throughput workflow, with minimal hands-on time," said Mensenkamp. "It is an accurate solution—of the 65 samples tested to date, we detected all expected mutations."

Life Technologies announced the community panel program in November with the first Ion AmpliSeq™ Community Panel—the Ion AmpliSeq™ Colon and Lung Cancer Panel design. The panel analyzes more than 500 mutations in a single-tube assay that requires just 10 ng of DNA input per primer pool, about 25-fold less than alternative gene panel approaches. The Ion AmpliSeq™ workflow is as simple as a PCR reaction and can be completed in as few as 3.5 hours turnaround time. That panel design is now available on ampliseq.com.

"The Ion AmpliSeq™ Colon and Lung Cancer panel design permits you to describe a cancer according to the molecular subpopulation that compose the lesion  and this is impossible to do with previous methods," said Dr. Aldo Scarpa, Director, Dept. of Pathology and ARC-NET Research Centre for Applied Research on Cancer, University of Verona, Italy.

Eight institutions – dubbed the OncoNetwork – participated in the development of the panel: Centro Ricerche Oncologiche Mercogliano, Italy; Leiter Genetik / Molekularbiologie Viollier AG, Switzerland; University of Warwick, UK; Institut Gustave Roussy France; Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, The Netherlands; Universite Paris Descartes Centre, Universitaire des Saints-Peres, France; St James' Hospital, Dublin EIRE and ARC-NET Research Center, University of Verona, Italy.

The Ion AmpliSeq™ panels referenced are For Research Use Only. Not for use in diagnostic procedures.

About Life Technologies

Life Technologies Corporation (NASDAQ: LIFE) is a global biotechnology company that is committed to providing the most innovative products and services to leading customers in the fields of scientific research, genetic analysis and applied sciences. With a presence in more than 180 countries, the company's portfolio of 50,000 end-to-end solutions is secured by more than 5,000 patents and licenses that span the entire biological spectrum -- scientific exploration, molecular diagnostics, 21^st century forensics, regenerative medicine and agricultural research. Life Technologies has approximately 10,000 employees and had sales of $3.8 billion in 2012.

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Life Technologies Contact
Wes Conard
415-385-4455
[email protected]

SOURCE Life Technologies Corporation