The potential to transform healthcare through information-rich, multi-omic analyses, provided rapidly and at the point of need
Oxford Nanopore's new generation of DNA/RNA sequencing technology has been serving an international community of scientific researchers since 2014, providing ultra-rich, rapid, multi-omic data for novel scientific analyses.
Increasingly, clinical and translational researchers are developing novel Oxford Nanopore-based applications that demonstrate the potential to transform health outcomes across a range of areas that include oncology, human genetic disease and infectious disease.
These novel applications lay a foundation for future healthcare practice and precision medicine, where pre-emptive understanding of disease risk together with specific understanding of a patient’s disease pathology, has the potential to enable personalised approaches to healthcare and patient management. Oxford Nanopore has established technology, capabilities, and partnerships, with the intention of developing transformational clinical applications that could profoundly improve health outcomes. Please get in touch if you are interested in partnering with us on this journey.
A new generation of sensing technology
Across more than 11,000 peer-reviewed research publications, Oxford Nanopore DNA and RNA sequencing has been shown to have three key benefits
A vision for...
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...infectious disease
rapid, accessible, precise, near- sample analyses
Driven by globalisation, population growth, urbanisation and climate change, infectious diseases remain major threats and a burden on human health. Novel and seasonal, mutating and evolving pathogens, as well as growing antimicrobial resistance, challenge our capabilities to prevent, diagnose, and control these threats. ’Oxford Nanopore’s sequencing technology enables rapid characterisation of pathogens. This can be harnessed within a public health setting to help combat global threats through rapid and precise identification of pathogens, and their antimicrobial resistance profiles or immune response assessment. The technology also has the potential to be deployed in clinical environments to rapidly characterise pathogens to guide appropriate treatment in acutely ill patients and break chains of transmission .
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...oncology
data-rich, rapid, accessible analyses
Cancer remains the second most common cause of death globally. Cancer is a disease of the genome, and therefore genomic insights have the potential to fundamentally change our understanding of cancer and to inform throughout the cancer patient journey, from risk assessment and screening to early detection, prognosis, therapy selection and monitoring. Recent studies have highlighted the need to fully characterise all genetic changes within a tumour, including structural variants (SVs) and methylation status. The flexibility of Oxford Nanopore technology allows both long- and short-read sequencing, enabling interrogation of large SVs or analysis of small fragments of circulating tumour DNA with the same sequencing system. The flexibility and simplicity of the Oxford Nanopore systems, combined with an increased understanding of the complexity of genetic variation associated with cancer, highlights the future potential for data-rich, rapid analyses that could provide clinically actionable insights at the point of need.
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...human genetic disease
rapid, accessible, high-resolution analysis
Oxford Nanopore Technology has made it possible for rapid characterisation of the true whole genome, plus methylome, in one assay. This enables clinical researchers to uncover previously dark regions of the genome and resolve odyssey-like searches for answers in genetic rare disease. This also has the potential to enable rapid characterisation of the genetic basis of disease in acute care settings, with some researchers demonstrating insights through whole genome sequencing in less than 12 hours. Oxford Nanopore sequencing also enables the rapid characterisation of specific gene targets that have previously proved challenging, with potential applications ranging from carrier screening to comprehensive pharmacogenomic profiling. For example, within transplant medicine, nanopore sequencing is capable of spanning long MHC regions. When combined with rapid turnaround times have the potential to transform deceased donor histocompatibility testing and to add value in transplant registry. In a research study, a team in Canada successfully developed a rapid workflow using nanopore sequencing for HLA typing in the context of clinical transplantation. Sequencing was performed between 6h and 12h, although sufficient reads for HLA assignment were achieved within 1 hr. Read more