Roche NimbleGen Announces New Pre-capture Multiplexing for Target Enrichment Technology in Sequencing

MADISON, Wisconsin, October 10, 2011 /PRNewswire/ --

With the decreasing cost and increasing throughput of sequencing, researchers require a high-performance, cost-effective sample preparation pipeline for targeted sequencing.  To enable researchers to more readily match targeted sequencing sample preparation throughput to the ever increasing throughput of next-generation sequencing, Roche NimbleGen (SIX: RO, ROG; OTCQX: RHHBY) announces the imminent launch of a pre-capture multiplex target enrichment protocol.  This new pre-capture multiplex protocol enables multiple DNA samples to be barcoded and captured in a single SeqCap EZ Library reaction for exome or custom capture experiments.

"We are extremely excited to provide researchers with a high performance, cost-effective pre-capture multiplex protocol that should allow researchers to increase the size of their studies, and thus, the statistical relevance," stated Frank Pitzer, CEO of Roche NimbleGen.  

In addition to the release of the pre-capture multiplex protocol, Roche NimbleGen will soon launch an additional, more comprehensive Exome capture product.  This new product will employ the same high-density probe technology that ensures high capture efficiency in all of its existing SeqCap EZ products.  However, the new Exome product will target 64Mb of coding exons and miRNAs, providing researchers with  an efficient target enrichment product with the most comprehensive coverage of coding regions.  

"The new extension of our target enrichment portfolio, NimbleGen SeqCap EZ Exome Library v3.0, will provide researchers with the same industry-renown performance and uniformity that researchers worldwide have proven in numerous recent publications.  In one recent study in Nature Biotechnology^[1], with 80M reads, ~97% of the target bases are covered by more than 10-fold using NimbleGen SeqCap EZ where only ~90% of the target bases are covered by competitive technologies. Additionally, SeqCap EZ Exome Library v3.0 will target the most comprehensive collection of exons in the market as defined by the RefSeq, CCDS, Vega, and Ensembl databases," Pitzer noted.  Roche NimbleGen will continue to offer the high-performance SeqCap EZ Exome v2.0 product, as an efficient tool for researchers who want to generate extremely cost-effective sequencing data for RefSeq exons.

Roche plans to release further information of both the pre-capture multiplexing protocol and the NimbleGen SeqCap EZ Exome v3.0 at the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) annual meeting (for more information visit Roche at ASHG booth number 502) next week in Montreal, Canada.

For more information about Roche NimbleGen, please visit http://www.nimblegen.com

1. Clark et al., Performance comparison of exome DNA sequencing technologies  (2011)

Nature Biotechnology Published online 25 September 2011  doi:1038/nbt.1975

About Roche

Headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, Roche is a leader in research-focused healthcare with combined strengths in pharmaceuticals and diagnostics. Roche is the world's largest biotech company with truly differentiated medicines in oncology, virology, inflammation, metabolism and CNS. Roche is also the world leader in in-vitro diagnostics, tissue-based cancer diagnostics and a pioneer in diabetes management. Roche's personalised healthcare strategy aims at providing medicines and diagnostic tools that enable tangible improvements in the health, quality of life and survival of patients. In 2010, Roche had over 80'000 employees worldwide and invested over 9 billion Swiss francs in R&D. The Group posted sales of 47.5 billion Swiss francs. Genentech, United States, is a wholly owned member of the Roche Group. Roche has a majority stake in Chugai Pharmaceutical, Japan. For more information: http://www.roche.com.

For life science research only. Not for use in diagnostic procedures.

NIMBLEGEN and SEQCAP are trademarks of Roche.

All other product names and trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

For further information please contact:


Roche Diagnostics
Dr. Burkhard Ziebolz
Phone: +49-8856-604830
Email: [email protected]


Roche NimbleGen
Kary Staples
Phone: +1-608-218-7623
Email: [email protected]

SOURCE Roche Diagnostics GmbH