Press release – KeyGene Bolsters Genotyping and Mutation Screening Patent Estate and Boosts Licensing Program

Today, KeyGene announces that it has further strengthened its global dominant Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) patent estate by recent grants of patents in the United States, China, Hong Kong and India. Furthermore, KeyGene announces expansion of its out-licensing program. The company aims to enable service providers, research- and diagnostic product manufacturers as well as academic organizations globally to use and offer its patented technologies. Recently issued patents protecting methods for NGS-based variant detection include US 9,702,004, US 9,777,324, and US 9,745,627, ZL201410177894.1 (China and Hong-Kong) and 289590 and 287606 (India).

To serve its customers in crop improvement KeyGene has developed a number of highly sensitive and cost-effective NGS-based workflows. These methods enable discovery and detection of genetic variation, either naturally occurring or introduced via random mutagenesis. Methods included are Sequence-Based Genotyping, KeyPoint^® Breeding and KeyGene^®SNPSelect. Beyond application in crops, these molecular indexing, barcoded amplicon and (exome) capturing approaches are powerful in today’s life sciences research and diagnostics. Application areas encompass farm animal breeding and human hereditary and somatic mutation detection including liquid biopsies.

KeyGene offers its patented NGS applications to customers and licensees and concluded more than twenty license agreements. To continue providing broad access to these powerful methods, KeyGene is committed to license interested parties in all fields of life sciences.

Arjen van Tunen, CEO of KeyGene, states:

“NGS methods have revolutionized the way genetic analysis and molecular diagnostics are conducted today. They provide unparalleled sensitivity, speed and accuracy. Conventional detection platforms have been replaced by direct read-out of genetic variants at the sequence level, even when extremely rare. The revolutionary impact of NGS on research and diagnostics has now become truly visible and provides new opportunities for crop variety development to produce more food and feed and in the medical field to diagnose, prevent and cure diseases. We are committed to advance crop improvement using NGS and are also keen to see these methods being adopted in other fields of use.”

Press release – KeyGene bolsters genotyping and mutation screening patent estate