Myriad Genetics, Inc., (NASDAQ:MYGN), a leader in genetic testing and precision medicine, and Ultima Genomics, Inc., a developer of a revolutionary new ultra-high throughput next-generation sequencing (NGS) platform, today announced a joint effort to explore Ultima's UG 100 sequencing platform and its ppmSeq technology to advance Myriad's ability to offer groundbreaking clinical tests. Myriad has purchased a new UG 100 that will soon join other leading sequencing platforms in its new Lab of the Future facility in South San Francisco.
The low-cost and low-error sequencing achievable on the UG 100 may benefit several of Myriad's emerging products that require large amounts of high-fidelity sequencing data. The Myriad Precise Molecular Residual Disease (MRD) test performs whole-genome sequencing on two samples from cancer patients—one from a tumor and one from normal tissue—to comprehensively identify tumor-specific variants for subsequent tracking in a personalized panel. With Ultima's support, Myriad will explore the potential for the Precise MRD test to improve in both performance and cost with ppmSeq on the UG 100. In the reproductive-health space, Myriad is expected to launch its FirstGene Multiple Prenatal Screen, which will run the content of multiple prenatal screens via a single sequencing workflow. FirstGene also requires deep and accurate sequencing that the UG 100 platform may be well suited to affordably provide.