Agencourt Bioscience Corporation, a provider of genomic services and nucleic acid purification products to the life sciences industry, announced that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has renewed its contract with Agencourt for genomic sequencing services.

Under the two-year contract, Agencourt will continue to provide expressed sequence tags (ESTs) and Serial Analysis of Gene Expression SAGE) sequencing for two major NIH initiatives, the Mammalian Gene Collection (MGC) project and the Cancer Genome Anatomy Project (CGAP).

The aim of the MGC project, a trans-NIH initiative co-managed by the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) and the National Cancer Institute (NCI), is to identify and sequence representative full open reading frame (ORF) cDNA clones for all human and mouse genes, as well as a subset of rat genes. Agencourt has sequenced over 1.3 million cDNA ESTs, which are being used to aid in the identification of candidate full-ORF cDNAs. Agencourt will continue to sequence cDNA tags for the MGC project and make all results publicly accessible to facilitate essential biomedical research.

"Agencourt looks forward to a continued collaboration with the NIH on these important sequencing projects," said Brian McKernan, president and CEO of Agencourt Bioscience. He added, "We have made great strides by developing key DNA libraries to help in future cancer research, and are confident that these projects will help accelerate the process of identifying and eradicating various cancers much earlier than ever before possible."

An official release says, the primary goals of CGAP, a programme supported by NCI, are mapping, evaluating and sequencing the genes of cells at various stages of cancer growth. This research programme provides scientists with sequence data to aid in the understanding of the molecular anatomy of cancer cells, thus improving the detection, diagnosis and treatment of cancer patients. Agencourt is responsible for sequencing CGAP's SAGE libraries, an experimental technique to quantify all expressed genes within cells. All resources generated by the project are publicly accessible and intended to accelerate the fight against cancer.