Swift Biosciences, a NGS Library Prep company, announced the commercial release of its Accel-Amplicon Plus Cancer NGS Panels, a suite of nine tumor-specific and focused gene panels to facilitate targeted cancer sequencing.

The Accel-Amplicon technology enables simultaneous detection of single nucleotide variants, copy number variants and small insertion and deletions to achieve comprehensive and exon-level hotspot coverage of clinically-relevant genes. It also allows researchers to combine pre-validated content and their own targets into a fast, single-tube assay to develop more informative and scalable workflows to better achieve their scientific goals.

Every tumor harbors a unique combination of genomic alterations, which may determine tumor growth rate and response to treatment. Targeted sequencing using focused, multigene panels provides a precise and informative method to quickly identify clinically actionable variants within known or putative cancer genes. However, developing cancer gene panels requires bioinformatics expertise to identify genetic markers and additional resources to design, optimize and validate an assay.

Accel-Amplicon Plus provides a modular, mix-and-match capability that gives translational laboratories greater flexibility to deploy more than one strategy. Laboratories may either begin with a broad gene set to comprehensively profile tumors and then refine the content to the most informative markers, or start with a very focused assay to routinely screen known, clinically actionable variants. Each assay can be designed to accommodate up to 1500 amplicons per panel, are designed and wet-lab validated by Swift’s experts, and are fully compatible with degraded FFPE or diluted liquid biopsy samples.

“Accel-Amplicon Plus Cancer Panels could revolutionize cancer and oncology research,” said Haley Fiske, chief commercial office at Swift Biosciences. “By integrating pre-validated and customizable content into a single panel, clinical researchers can maximize data generated from every tumor sample and accelerate their efforts to discover and screen cancer variants.”

The Accel-Amplicon Plus Cancer Panels consist of nine assays: Disease panels – Accel-Amplicon Plus Colorectal Cancer Panel; Accel-Amplicon Plus™ Lynch Syndrome Panel;  Accel-Amplicon Plus Lung Cancer Panel;  Accel-Amplicon Plus Myeloid Panel.

Gene panels: Accel-Amplicon Plus 57G Pan-Cancer Profiling Panel; Accel-Amplicon Plus Comprehensive TP53 Gene Panel;  Accel-Amplicon Plus BRCA1 and BRCA2 Gene Panel;  Accel-Amplicon Plus BRCA 1, BRCA 2 and PALB 2 Gene Panel;  Accel-Amplicon Plus EGFR Pathway Panel.

Key features and benefits of the Accel-Amplicon Plus Cancer NGS Panels include: Covers thousands of clinically relevant mutations found in the COSMIC and ClinVar databases including those in hotspot regions and at the exon or whole-gene level of key genes; Detects rare variants > 1% allele frequency to identify both germline or somatic mutations in the same assay; Provides robust performance with as little as 10 nanograms sample input from degraded FFPE samples or limited specimens such as cell-free DNA, fine needle aspirates or other small biopsies; Compatible with all Illumina sequencers.

With highly informative content, an easy protocol and reliable results, the panels enable several critical oncology applications, including: Low frequency somatic variant discovery or confirmation; Tumor profiling in fresh or preserved samples; Screening for disease susceptibility, early detection and recurrence; Therapeutic efficacy and monitoring.

In parallel with the Accel-Amplicon Plus Cancer Panel release, the company launched the Swift Bioinformatics Resources, an offering of open source and commercial solutions to expedite analysis of large NGS data sets. The first two tools support Swift’s targeted resequencing workflow, including Primerclip, an open source tool for primer trimming, and FAST Analysis, an intuitive variant detection software from Genialis that seamlessly integrates alignment, allele calling and summary report.

Swift Biosciences is the NGS Library Prep company. Based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the company develops novel library preparation solutions for emerging applications based on next-generation sequencing, including whole genome sequencing, targeted DNA sequencing, and epigenetic analysis.