WHEN Oxford Gene Technology (OGT) hosted a workshop at the European Society of Human Genetics (ESHG) 2012 conference in Germany last month, it was pleasantly surprised to find the event oversubscribed.
The 200 attendees who were able to get in, including some forced to stand, learned about recent developments in the use of arrays and next generation sequencing (NGS) to identify causative mutations in cancer and rare disease samples.
Due to the popularity of the workshop, OGT has now made the recording of the sequencing presentation from the event freely available to view online.
Among those speaking were Dr Dan Swan, senior NGS computational biologist at OGT, and Professor Jacqueline Schoumans, head of the Cancer Cytogenetic Unit in Lausanne University Hospital, Switzerland.
Dr Swan presented data from OGT’s Genefficiency targeted sequencing service, designed to facilitate the rapid interpretation of vast NGS datasets. The workshop also provided the first taste of OGT’s upcoming Genefficiency RNA-seq service, which is currently open to early access customers.
Professor Schoumans discussed her team’s recent study comparing array platforms. The results led to the group’s collaboration with OGT, and the subsequent development of a new, optimised array for investigating genomic variation in haematological and solid cancers.
By combining OGT’s proprietary copy number and single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) probe technology, the array provides highly sensitive detection of a wide range of variants, and will soon be available via OGT’s CytoSure range of cytogenetic analysis products.
An interview with Professor Schoumans regarding her research and choice of array platform, conducted at ESHG by Justin Petrone for GenomeWeb, is also available to download from OGT’s website.