Agena Bioscience Launches High Sensitivity and Multiplexed Genetic Testing Product for Targeted Analysis of Solid Tumors

Agena Bioscience has announced the commercial availability of iPLEX^® HS, a new chemistry that enables highly sensitive, multiplexed detection of genetic variants present in solid tumors.

iPLEX HS, unveiled at the American Association of Cancer Research conference, provides cancer researchers a unique combination of sensitivity and ease-of-use for targeted genetic analysis across a wide range of cancer derived specimens.

“Increasingly, cancer researchers need to profile samples at different stages of disease— whether at initial disease onset for stratification, or later testing for drug resistance,” said Pete Dansky, Chief Executive Officer of Agena Bioscience. “They require a robust, cost-effective method capable of spanning a wide range of sample types and sensitivity levels. We developed iPLEX HS to enable these and many other kinds of studies,” he stated.

iPLEX HS chemistry enables detection of genetic variants, including somatic mutations, translocations, and indels, that are present at levels as low as 1% in frequency. This new capability is ideal for targeted genotyping of tumor biopsies where higher sensitivity is critical and sample quantity is limited, such as with heterogeneous tumors and formalin-fixed tissue, as well as for orthogonal validation of next generation sequencing results.

“The ability to derive meaningful insights from limited, precious samples such as fine needle aspirates from lung cancer specimens or enriched CTC sub-populations is critical for cancer researchers,” Dansky continued. “We developed iPLEX HS to provide our customers a dynamic, scalable method to analyze more samples at greater levels of sensitivity.”

iPLEX HS joins Agena Bioscience’s family of multiplex genotyping solutions, including iPLEX Pro chemistry for germline mutation analysis and UltraSEEK™ chemistry for ultrasensitive detection in liquid biopsies. Together these products provide for robust and cost effective genetic analysis across a full spectrum of sensitivities and sample types, ideal for laboratories that are translating discoveries from clinical research to higher throughput testing. All three chemistries are run on the MassARRAY^® System, each enabling multiplexing of tens of genetic variants in a single reaction with as little as 10 nanograms of input DNA.