Twist Bioscience Corporation, a company that offers high-quality synthetic DNA using its silicon platform, along with Aster Insights, has announced the availability of the AsterExome panel, which can simultaneously enable whole exome sequencing (WES) with additional coverage for target regions known to contain 620 genes associated with cancer. By integrating the panel into Aster Insights’ AVATAR sequencing program, AsterExome can provide comprehensive analysis in the discovery research market for solid tumor and heme malignancy samples.
“This new panel, built with Twist’s design expertise and custom [next-generation sequencing] tools, delivers critical innovation in oncology research, creating greater efficiency and markedly increasing coverage of cancer genes, including those associated with solid tumors, to help expedite discovery,” said Aster Insights Chief Data and Analytics Officer Dan Elgort. “With this new tool in our arsenal, we expect to provide a precise, expansive analysis for patient care.”
Twist Bioscience CEO and Co-founder Emily M. Leproust added, “We are able to blend targets from Aster Insights with Twist’s Exome 2.0 design to create a custom panel with high accuracy, efficiently designed to enable research. This custom panel provides balanced coverage of cancer-associated genes that are easily detected, as well as those that often go undetected.”
The AsterExome panel’s design helps facilitate identification of copy number variations that are often undetected by standard next-generation sequencing panels, which can be helpful in identifying cancers driven by gene amplifications. The panel also maintains somatic mutation detection accuracy, sensitivity, and precision for the discovery of a wide range of somatic alterations.
The AsterExome panel will be integrated into Aster Insights’ AVATAR program, which can enable informatics-based analysis of paired tumor and germline DNA and RNA sequencing data from patients consented via the Total Cancer Care (TCC) protocol. Aster Insights’ real-world AVATAR dataset comes from its Oncology Research Information Exchange Network (ORIEN) partners, an alliance of 18 of the top cancer centers across more than a dozen U.S. states.
Read the original press release here.
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