Roche has put forward a new approach to genetic analysis, which it describes as sequencing-by-expansion—a proprietary method that pulls apart the DNA molecule and amplifies the signal of each individual base.
The company said its technique—which combines aspects of DNA synthesis and nanopore-based molecule reading—can avoid the time requirements of cycle-based sequencing as well as the comparable difficulties in distinguishing true signals among the noise.
Dubbed SBX, it’s the long-awaited fruit of two of Roche’s previous acquisitions: Stratos Genomics, the inventor of sequencing-by-expansion technology, purchased in 2020; and Genia Technologies, bought in 2014 for its massively parallel, single-molecule nanopore platform.
