G42 Healthcare, the Abu Dhabi-based health-tech company, announced the signing of a distribution agreement with Oxford Nanopore as a channel partner for their DNA/RNA sequencing products across Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) countries, Jordan, Pakistan, Egypt, and Iraq.
Oxford Nanopore’s sequencing devices include the MinION, GridION, PromethION, VolTRAX and Flongle. This agreement is aligned with G42 Healthcare’s vision to make UAE the regional hub of health and life sciences by offering technology for real-time, accurate, accessible, and scalable analysis of DNA and RNA. The technology supports scientific analyses to further understand the biology of humans, bacteria, viruses, and environments as well as to understand diseases such as cancer.
The technology includes the ability to sequence any length of DNA/RNA fragments, from short to ultra-long, thereby offering richer genomic insights; the ability to stream data in real-time for rapid insights; the ability to sequence native DNA/RNA strands to elucidate richer information including real-time methylation data. A range of analyses from whole genome assembly to targeted sequencing or metagenomic analysis can be performed.
Talking about the distribution agreement with Oxford Nanopore, Ashish Koshy, CEO of G42 Healthcare, said “G42 Healthcare will leverage its experience to support projects across GCC and penetrate new markets across the region. As an end-to-end service provider, we can support with long and short-read sequencing requirements regardless of location, capabilities, and infrastructure of governments, healthcare providers, and research institutes. This agreement is a strategic step forward to realising our vision to develop a world-class healthcare sector in the UAE”.
G42 Healthcare also has the option to provide sequencing services internationally, with the potential to offer sequencing of human and non-human. With a deep focus on offering sequencing as a service, G42 Healthcare has the potential to provide broad, high-impact, rapid insights to enable the interpretation of accurate, rich biological data at scale, by leveraging nanopore sequencing technology.
Gordon Sanghera, CEO of Oxford Nanopore Technologies, said: “Our technology delivers accurate, comprehensive genomic data, in real-time and in formats that can scale from pocket size to ultra-high output. We have developed a new generation of sensing technology that uses nanopore – nano-scale holes – embedded in high-tech electronics to perform precise molecular analyses.”
Oxford Nanopore’s technology is used in more than 120 countries to understand the biology of humans and diseases such as cancer, plants, animals, bacteria, viruses, and whole environments.
Earlier this year, Biogenix Labs – part of G42 Healthcare, became the first laboratory in the Middle East to conduct sequencing for COVID-19 surveillance and variant detection using Oxford Nanopore’s technology. With that, Biogenix Labs became the first lab in the Middle East to be certified for cost-effective, high-accuracy sequencing for genomic epidemiology for COVID-19 strain surveillance.
