Agilent launches focused exome kit for disease research

Agilent has announced the launch of its new SureSelect Focused Exome, a target enrichment solution that promises to offer unparalleled coverage, speed and flexibility.

Enabling deep coverage of only those target regions that have been associated with disease, this latest 16 Mb design enables 98 percent of targeted regions to be covered with 20 or more reads with only 3 Gb of sequencing.

This allows for sensitive detection of variants within a given sample, making it an ideal solution for both high-throughput and benchtop next-generation sequencing applications. Users can confidently make variant calls in regions of significance by targeting regions defined in HGMD, OMIM and ClinVar databases.

It is the latest addition to Agilent's SureSelect portfolio, which is the industry's leading target enrichment offering.

Alessandro Borsatti, senior director of marketing for Agilent's diagnostics and genomics group, said: "The SureSelect Focused Exome completes Agilent's constitutional disease portfolio and meets the specialised needs of all types of clinical researchers."

This comes after the firm recently announced its decision to discontinue its nuclear magnetic resonance business in order to focus on higher-growth areas.