GenoLogics, a leading provider of laboratory information management system (LIMS) software for next-generation genomics labs, announced a detailed product roadmap for its eponymous LIMS, designed to provide the scalability, adaptability and usability features necessary for mainstream adoption of the most advanced sequencing technologies while supporting existing genotyping platforms. By incorporating a set of comprehensive features over the next year in the GenoLogics LIMS, the company is building on its deep experience in genomics to meet the standardization, flexibility and user requirements of next-generation genomics labs.
Specifically, GenoLogics announced that the enhancement of its LIMS will offer several new features. Pre-configured integrations and interfaces to major next-generation sequencing (NGS) instruments, with the immediate availability of the GenoLogics LIMS pre-configured for Illumina NGS systems. Additional pre-configured system offerings will be available in the second half of 2011. Immediate availability of GenoLogics Rapid Scripting Application Programming Interface (API), empowering scientific programmers and bioinformaticians to quickly and easily reconfigure or customize workflows as laboratory protocols change. Role-based user interfaces that address the specific needs of laboratory managers, laboratory technicians and external collaborators. The first role-based user interface, for lab technicians, will be available by the end of 2011.
The rollout of an enhanced GenoLogics LIMS provides the industry’s most advanced, comprehensive information management system for next-generation genomics labs.”
It took more than a decade and an estimated cost of $3 billion to publish the first draft of the human genome in 2000. Just over 10 years later, businesses are competing to sequence an individual’s entire genome in a matter of weeks for about $10,000 (Genome sequences data: Management, storage, and visualization, BioTechniques 2009). With decreasing costs and incredible improvements in speed driving a projected 250 percent increase of NGS product sales between 2009 and 2014 (Scientia Advisors, August 2010), organizations are facing a deluge of critical genomic data. In fact, new instruments running at capacity could generate more information in a single year than the total deposited in GenBank at the beginning of 2008 (The new paradigm of flow cell sequencing, Genome Research 2010). In a J.P. Morgan survey published in 2010, lab directors cited data storage, data management and informatics as the biggest collective hurdle to expanding NGS operations.
A full-featured LIMS manages laboratory data from sample submission to delivery of data for analysis. However, the unprecedented throughput, experimental complexity and changeability associated with NGS create unique challenges for a LIMS. The rapid timescales associated with sequencing require systems that can be configured quickly and easily to accommodate the specific instrumentation chosen by a lab. Scientific programmers and bioinformaticians must be able to easily adapt the system themselves to support changing technologies and protocols. In addition, NGS requires iterative, collaborative work that is performed by many different types of scientists.
To spearhead the GenoLogics strategy that will guide the company’s LIMS from successful early adoption to mainstream market leadership, GenoLogics also announced today that it has appointed life sciences and technology product marketing veteran Bruce Pharr as vice president of product management and marketing. Pharr most recently served as vice president of marketing at Symyx Technologies.