Industry News: Arbor Biosciences and Curio Genomics expand partnership

Arbor Bioscience and Curio Genomics announced an exciting expansion of their existing partnership at the 28th International Plant and Animal Genome conference in San Diego. The enhanced partnership promises to deliver a host of additional first-in-class products and solutions to the plant research and development community in commercial, as well as, nonprofit foundations, consortia, and academic institutions.

With a potential deal value exceeding $1 million, the multiyear partnership leverages the core expertise and experience of each company to deliver cutting-edge, robust and comprehensive products for customers. Arbor Biosciences brings decades of combined expertise in NGS with novel advanced synthesis chemistry and expert scientific consulting to develop both catalog and custom targeted sequencing panels. Curio Genomics brings decades of experience in big-data commercial software platforms designed from the beginning for limitless scalability and extensibility, essential for genomic research with larger data sets, new types, and greater demand to integrative analyses each year. 

“This is a transformative partnership for Curio,” said David Brabec, Curio’s Chief Business Officer. “We know that researchers, both commercial and academic, want and need solutions that are continuously cutting-edge, if we are going to continue feeding a growing world in a time when our climate is rapidly changing. Arbor Biosciences’ decades of combined scientific expertise in NGS and their track record of delighted customers was a key for us choosing them as our first major partner.”  

“Curio is the perfect partner as we continue to expand Arbor’s solutions to enhance and simplify research for our customers,” said Arbor Bioscience’s Director of Genomics, Alison Devault. “The plant genomics space is an incredibly exciting business opportunity, but also a truly meaningful research space for translational and social impact. We are proud to be making such a visible commitment to this important and adapting market.”   

The companies’ announcement included immediate plans to expand their existing and acclaimed wheat exome and complete genome analysis solution by fully integrating their current offerings by mid-2020 with new capabilities for wheat researchers, such as support for RNA-Seq and methylation analysis, to be released later in 2020, and over the course of the multiyear partnership. The companies also announced immediate plans to co-develop products for additional species beyond wheat and will disclose these product plans at a later date. 

“With Arbor’s decades of combined experience in NGS, we will leverage the power of the Curio® platform to provide whole genomic research teams a collaborative and endlessly extensible environment for real-time processing, analysis and interpretation of plant genomic data,” said Curio’s co-founder and CTO, Shawn Quinn. “We are excited to provide complete solutions for researchers from question to sample to insight and back again.” 

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