Roche Acquires Rights to Technology and Patent Applications from AbVitro to Support Next-Generation Sequencing Pipeline

Roche announced today it made a technology acquisition from AbVitro Inc, a company focused on therapeutic target discovery. Roche obtained exclusive rights to a primer extension based target enrichment technology and associated patent applications filed by AbVitro. Under the terms of the agreement, AbVitro and Roche scientists will collaborate on the development and application of the technology.

The primer extension based target enrichment (PETE) technology will be used to support next-generation sequencing directly from blood or other biological samples, a key advantage for clinical sequencing applications. This PETE technology, will be incorporated into Roche’s Sequencing Unit R&D pipeline to support the strategy of providing a full next-generation sequencing workflow solution for clinical sequencing.

“The potential of this technology will allow Roche to optimize our sequencing portfolio to provide a full workflow solution for our customers,” said Dan Zabrowski, Head of Roche Tissue Diagnostics and the Sequencing Unit. “Sequencing is transforming the understanding among researchers and clinicians of how genomics will impact health. We look forward to advancing this technology in order to streamline sequencing methods for easy-to-use clinical applications.”

“We are excited by Roche’s acquisition of our primer extension based target enrichment and the prospect of continued collaboration to develop the technology further. This technology surpasses current industry standards and we believe Roche to be incredibly well positioned to create a true disruption in the next-generation sample prep market,” said Dr. Francois Vigneault, President, CSO & Founder at AbVitro. “It is wonderful to see another potentially transformative sequencing technology transition into Roche where it can impact our daily lives,” said Dr. George Church, Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School, and Founder of AbVitro.