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August 1, 2016  |  General

Histogenetics Ramps Up HLA Typing with SMRT Sequencing

PacBio customer HistoGenetics was just awarded a major, multi-year contract to perform HLA typing on as many as thousands of samples per week using SMRT Sequencing. The company is a pioneer and global leader in high-resolution sequence-based HLA typing services.
As blog readers know, HLA typing involves analysis of highly polymorphic human leukocyte antigen (HLA) genes comprised within the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) on chromosome 6. Accurate HLA typing is essential for research on donor recipient tissue matching during transplantation, autoimmune disease-association studies, drug hypersensitivity research, and several other applications. But the complexity of the region, which contains thousands of possible alleles, has made it challenging to represent with short-read sequencing technologies.
With its long reads and high consensus accuracy, SMRT Sequencing has been a natural fit for scientists trying to analyze the HLA region.
In an announcement about this news, HistoGenetics CEO Nezih Cereb said, “In HLA typing, there is no room for errors. The combination of PacBio’s high accuracy and long read lengths to accurately sequence and phase HLA genes is the new gold standard in the field.”
For more, check out this video of Dr. Cereb explaining the utility of SMRT Sequencing for HLA.

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