Agencourt, Integrated Genomics team on services

 Agencourt Bioscience and Integrated Genomics have teamed to offer a “one-stop shop” for high throughput genomic sequencing, genetic analysis and bionformatics services, the companies announced Wednesday.

Under terms of the deal, whose financial details were not disclosed, Agencourt will provide sequencing using its Discovery Solutions genomic services suite and then hand off that work to Integrated Genomics for analysis and bioinformatics services, including access to a genomics database.

“Most customers understand that sequencing is something they should stay away from — you leave that to the professionals,” said Roelf Datema, chief executive officer of Integrated Genomics, based in Chicago. That wasn’t the case a few years ago, he said, when “everyone thought they had to do their own sequencing work.”

But now sequencing is becoming a commodity, he said. Companies specializing in genomic sequencing draw customers from a range of companies, including those in the pharmaceuticals, chemical and food industries, so that biologists are freed from “spending a year behind a computer trying to figure out things we can do in a day.”

Agencourt, in Beverly, Massachusetts, can fully sequence a microbial genome in under a week, said Mann Shoffner, the company’s senior manager for marketing.

The deal also will allow customers to obtain better data from sequencing and the follow-up analysis, so that genes that were previously not known or were mischaracterized can be better identified, with their functions assigned, and then integrated into pathways, the companies said.

“These days for bioinformatics, it’s not about better data, it’s about better answers,” Datema said.