"Going forward, theRUCDR will have the capacity to prepare every biological sample coming into therepository for automated sequencing applications. This will help expediteresearch projects, ensure comparable data quality across analytical centers andfacilitate large-scale access and use of clinically-relevant samples across avariety of NIH, foundation and industry funded projects," said Dr. AndrewBrooks, associate professor of genetics and chief operating officer of the RutgersUniversity Cell and DNA Repository, in the news release about the deal. "Aspreserving prepared libraries of patient samples is becoming a new standardpractice for accelerating NGS studies, it is our intention to continue to bethe leader in providing researchers with unparalleled access to high qualitynucleic acid and cellular material to make potential therapies and diagnosticsmore powerful and accurate. Without this critical relationship with PerkinElmer,we would not have been able to achieve these goals as efficiently as we have." 

 

"Dr. Brooks was anearly adopter of the Labchip DNA separation technology, and more recently acontributor to the development, and early adopter of, the Labchip DSmicrofluidic absorbance reader for nucleic acid quantitation and purity," AndrewBarry, product marketing manager at PerkinElmer, tells ddn.  "This identified Dr.Brooks as someone who, as a customer, could add significant value to productdevelopment, and as a pioneer in his field, someone who could really help guideus through questions that we, as an industrial partner face on a daily basis."

 

When Dr. Brooks waslooking to add NGS capabilities to his biorepository workflows, the opportunityto work together using the Sciclone NGS automation platform was apparent, Barrysays, adding, "More than anything, the relationship highlights the emphasis andvalue that Caliper, and now PerkinElmer, place on working closely with partnersin academia to develop technologies that are enabling for customers."