Agena Bioscience Aims to Advance the MassARRAY^® System

Agena Bioscience aims to advance the MassARRAY System, a proprietary platform used in unlocking biological understanding from genetic studies. The vision is to leverage the unique capabilities of the MassARRAY system and make it an informative and cost-effective genetic analysis tool for use in clinical practice.

The MassARRAY system has recently been demonstrated for use in clinical oncology research. New methods, such as the UltraSEEK^™ chemistry, enable ultrasensitive mutation detection in circulating plasma, paraffin-embedded tissue and cells at less than 1 percent abundance. Dr. Kazuto Nishio and colleagues from Kinki University in Osaka, Japan will demonstrate use of the platform for profiling lung cancer-related gene fusions and rare somatic hot mutations that may affect patients’ therapeutic responses in a phase III trial of multiple lung cancer drugs. Data from the study will be presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting in Chicago on Saturday, May 31.

Agena Bioscience, a portfolio company of Telegraph Hill Partners (THP), today acquired the Bioscience business of Sequenom, Inc. (NASDAQ:SQNM), which sells the MassARRAY System for mass spectrometry-based detection of nucleic acids in research and clinical laboratories. Agena Bioscience will remain headquartered in San Diego, California.