Rubicon Genomics Reports Surge In 2013 Sales Of Its Nucleic Acid Library Prep Kits

ANN ARBOR, Mich., Dec. 23, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Rubicon Genomics, Inc.,(Rubicon) today reported major gains in 2013 sales of its nucleic acid library preparation products, ThruPLEX^®-FD Prep Kits and PicoPLEX™ WGA Kits, resulting in an increase in company revenues of 85%. 

James Koziarz, PhD, CEO of Rubicon Genomics, commented, "This has been a breakout year for Rubicon, as our expanded marketing efforts and use of our DNA prep kits in high visibility scientific publications have made more researchers aware of the advantages of our technology. Our patented ThruPLEX and PicoPLEX kits enable high quality sequencing of research and clinical samples that previously were too small or too degraded for testing."

In the past year, Rubicon technology has been used in studies featured in such publications as Nature¹, Nature Genetics² and Nature Methods³. The Nature study was the first to show that exomes sequenced from patient plasma could serve as a non-invasive biopsy to track the evolution of cancer in response to therapy, and ThruPLEX-FD was intrinsic to the success of that effort.

Dr. Koziarz continued, "Increased sales have allowed us to expand our resources to better serve our customers, including adding noted NGS researcher Dr. Kamran Shazand to lead our applications team. They also have generated production efficiencies that are enabling us to reduce prices in 2014, with the goal of ensuring broad access to Rubicon kits as we continue to grow our network of global distributors."

ThruPLEX-FD Prep Kits for Illumina^® NGS platforms provide sensitive and consistent sequencing from challenging samples containing very small amounts of DNA or degraded DNA, delivering rapid sequencing of plasma, formalin-fixed, ChIP and other fragmented DNA samples with increased throughput. ThruPlex-FD employs a highly efficient, user-friendly process that uses a single tube and requires less than two hours. 

PicoPLEX-WGA Kits amplify DNA to yield a highly reproducible library from single cells with input concentrations as low as 15 picograms, producing DNA for analyses where accuracy and reproducibility are important. The easy-to-use single tube protocol reduces handling errors and background and dramatically improves time to results. The product is used in research and clinical applications and has been widely adopted in IVF pre-implantation screening.

1. Non-invasive analysis of acquired resistance to cancer therapy by sequencing of plasma DNA. Muhammed Murtaza, et al. Nature 497, 108-112 doi:10.1038/nature12065
2. Large conserved domains of low DNA methylation maintained by Dnmt3a. Jeong, Mira, et al. Nature Genetics (2013) doi:10.1038/ng.2836
3. Refined DNase-seq protocol and data analysis reveals intrinsic bias in transcription factor footprint identification. He, Housheng Hansen, et al. Nature Methods (2013) doi:10.1038/nmeth.2762

About Rubicon Genomics
Rubicon Genomics, Inc. is a leader in the development and commercialization of innovative sample-specific nucleic acid library preparation products used in research and clinical testing on NGS, microarray, and q-PCR platforms. The company creates efficient molecular biology tools for genetic, epigenetic and expression analysis of difficult samples to facilitate gene-based research, drug development and diagnostics.  Privately-held Rubicon is located in Ann Arbor, Michigan. For more information, visit rubicongenomics.com.

SOURCE Rubicon Genomics, Inc.