Oxford Nanopore and Twist Bioscience Partner To Advance Personalised Medicine

Oxford Nanopore Technologies (Oxford Nanopore) has announced the introduction of a new Pharmacogenomics (PGx) Beta Programme to promote personalized medicine. The program combines Twist Bioscience's next generation sequencing (NGS) target enrichment technology with Oxford Nanopore's sequencing platform.  

The newly released Twist-Oxford Nanopore long-read PGx solution, which is now available for research use, is intended to provide unambiguous genetic results in a single end-to-end workflow from sample to PGx star allele call, eliminating the need for time-consuming and costly follow-up tests, as opposed to traditional methods. The beta programme attempts to broaden the range of genetic variants assessed by Oxford Nanopore's technology.  

“Our collaboration with Twist Bioscience underscores our commitment to advancing the possibility of personalised medicine through PGx by providing unambiguous genetic results in a single assay,” said Gordon Sanghera, CEO of Oxford Nanopore. “Combined with Twist’s technology, Oxford Nanopore’s value proposition for PGx lies in the ability to deliver richer data through long reads, ultra-fast sequencing speed, accessible form factor and flexibility in terms of throughput, making it an ideal choice for comprehensive and efficient genetic analysis in clinical settings."

The PGx beta programme effectively resolved the CYP2D6 gene in a single experiment. CYP2D6 metabolizes 20% of medications on the market and is one of the most difficult genes to sequence due to its complicated structure. The Twist Alliance Long-Read PGx Panel, along with Chinook, Oxford Nanopore's CYP2D6-specific allele caller, achieved 100% CYP2D6 reference concordance, beyond the constraints of traditional sequencing methods.