Life Technologies and Boston Children’s Hospital, home of the world’s largest pediatric research enterprise, today announced a research and development collaboration to develop an end-to-end genetic sequencing lab workflow based on Life Technologies’ Ion Proton™ Sequencer.  The parties plan to collaborate and develop an optimized laboratory infrastructure and lab protocols for an advanced sequencing facility to be built at Boston Children’s in compliance with CLIA and CAP certification standards. 

The collaboration expects to benefit from Life Technologies’ leading expertise in DNA sequencing technology and bioinformatics, and Boston Children’s clinical research, genomics and informatics expertise. Dr. David Margulies, director of The Gene Partnership Program at Boston Children’s Hospital said: “This collaboration is an important first step toward providing informed, personalized care for patients whose conditions are difficult to treat.  The development of an optimized laboratory infrastructure will support our mission of providing the highest quality, innovative and cost effective care to our patients.”

Dr. Paul Billings, Chief Medical Officer at Life Technologies adds: "We are excited at the prospect of collaborating with the world-renowned experts in pediatric genetic disease at Boston Children’s to develop and demonstrate best practices for using our proprietary Ion Torrent sequencing platform. Partnerships like these are essential to our Medical Sciences strategy as we seek to assist researchers in discovering improved diagnostics and treatments for genetic conditions."

About Boston Children’s
Founded in 1869 as a 20-bed hospital for children, Boston Children’s Hospital has been ranked as one of the nation’s best pediatric hospitals by U.S. News & World Report for the past 21 years. Boston Children’s is the primary pediatric teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School and the largest provider of health care to Massachusetts children. In addition to 395 pediatric and adolescent inpatient beds and 228 outpatient programs, Boston Children’s houses the world’s largest research enterprise based at a pediatric medical center, where its discoveries benefit both children and adults.

More than 1,100 scientists, including nine members of the National Academy of Sciences, 11 members of the Institute of Medicine and nine members of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, comprise Boston Children’s research community.

For more information about the hospital visit: www.childrenshospital.org/newsroom.

More information about the Ion Proton Sequencer.