Oxford Nanopore announces technology updates at Nanopore Community Meeting

Highlights include release of new "Kit 12" and R10.4 flow cells for >Q20 (>99%) raw read and around Q30 (99.9%) Duplex sequencing accuracy, and the new PromethION P2 device, a palm-sized, high-throughput sequencer that delivers the most accessible low-cost, high-output Oxford Nanopore sequencer 

Oxford, UK:  Oxford Nanopore has provided a technology update at its Nanopore Community Meeting, describing a range of product releases and upgrades. These include the release of "Kit 12", a new kit that includes the latest "Q20+" chemistry and enables "Duplex" sequencing. This is coupled with the release of R10.4 flow cells. Users of nanopore sequencing can now achieve >Q20 raw read/"simplex" accuracy or around Q30 Duplex accuracy, and enhanced, high-accuracy consensus sequencing and variant calling, using these released products.  

The Company has also announced PromethION 2 (P2), a device that can run up to two high-throughput PromethION Flow Cells, which will be available in starter packs from US$10,455. The P2 is designed to bring low-cost nanopore sequencing for large genomes or high-throughput long-read transcriptomics, without the requirement for capital investment and with minimal infrastructure requirement. P2 will be available as a standalone device with integrated compute, or "P2 Solo", a sequencing device that can be connected to existing compute, including GridION. P2 Solo will be shipped from Q2 2022 and Oxford Nanopore is now taking pre orders here.      

Oxford Nanopore also introduced Remora, a new tool for methylation analysis. Remora further enhances base-modification analysis, and is used during the experiment (concurrent to standard basecalling), at no additional cost, while maintaining high-accuracy basecalling of native bases. Remora provides industry-leading performance at only 20X coverage. 

"Short fragment mode" (SFM), to optimise accurate, high-throughput sequencing of shorter fragments as short as 20 bp, will be fully enabled in the new year.  Oxford Nanopore's technology sequences DNA or RNA molecules of any length, from short to ultra-long. However, software output settings have historically avoided shorter "adapter only" reads. SFM is designed to optimise applications where larger volumes of shorter fragments require high-accuracy analysis, supporting as many as 250M native human reads, at ~200 bp, on a PromethION flow cell. 

"Path to in-field liquid biopsy". R&D pipeline programmes were reviewed, including chemistries such as "inny" and "outy", that capture a single molecule of DNA and make multiple measurements of that single molecule. These techniques have the potential to deliver "Adaptive Accuracy" - supporting capture and re-reading of rare variants in a mixed sample.  could be paired with liquid biopsy workflows in the lab or in the field, potentially enabling easy-to-use remote "liquid biopsy" sequencing. 

The Company is developing an integrated sequencer and tablet; the MinION Mk1D, that would be capable of processing the high data volumes produced by MinION and could be used for this purpose.  

Nanopore Community Meeting 

The annual Nanopore Community Meeting, held online in 2021, has this year featured more than 50 user talks, spanning areas including human genetics, clinical / cancer research, microbiology including genomic epidemiology, plant and animal research and bioinformatics.  Write ups and videos of the talks are made available on the nanopore website.  At the meeting, Oxford Nanopore provided a technology update, featuring Clive G Brown (CTO) and talks from James Clarke, Stuart Reid and Rosemary Sinclair Dokos. 

For a complete overview of these and more announcements, please visit Oxford Nanopore's website at https://nanoporetech.com/about-us/news/oxford-nanopore-announces-technology-updates-nanopore-community-meeting