Ultima Genomics partners with Sentieon and Google DeepVariant to deliver high-performance variant calling

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May 31, 2022, 17:12 ET

NEWARK, Calif., May 31, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Ultima Genomics, Inc. today announced partnerships with Sentieon and Google DeepVariant to offer highly accurate and accelerated variant calling for customers who wish to run pipelines at scale. Both DeepVariant and Sentieon have developed Ultima-specific machine learning models which will be made available in the coming months. Ultima's early access customers will be offered a Sentieon license to process Ultima data at no cost through the end of 2022.

Over the last 5 years, Ultima Genomics has developed a fundamentally new sequencing architecture designed to scale beyond conventional approaches, including completely different flow cell engineering, sequencing chemistry, and machine learning. Ultima is currently in an early access program for the UG 100™, its first high-throughput NGS instrument using this new technology architecture which enables customers to generate high-quality sequencing data at a cost of $1/Gb.

"Ultima's mission is to continuously drive the scale of genomic information," said Gilad Almogy, CEO of Ultima Genomics. "As we prepare to launch our first high-throughput sequencer, we are excited to partner with informatics leaders such as Google and Sentieon to continually improve and accelerate the generation of high-quality data at scale."

Google DeepVariant

DeepVariant is an open-source technology that identifies genetic variants in sequencing data using deep learning. DeepVariant is noted for its high accuracy, with awards in multiple PrecisionFDA challenges, and for its extensibility to new sequencing methods. DeepVariant is available under the BSD open source license.

"I'm excited by the potential for new methods to generate genomic data at much greater scales", said Andrew Carroll, Product Lead for Genomics in Google Research. "I'm particularly impressed by the technical abilities of the Ultima informatics team, who are the first external team to extend DeepVariant's input channels to capture additional rich information specific to their sequencer in order to further improve accuracy."

Sentieon

Sentieon, a developer of highly accurate and optimized algorithms for bioinformatics applications, has created tools that are faster and cheaper alternatives to the industry standard for secondary analysis in NGS data processing. Sentieon technology provides high accuracy and ease of use, while dramatically improving processing speed.

"We are delighted to support Ultima's UG 100 platform as it increases the potential for scale in the high-volume sequencing market," said Jun Ye, CEO of Sentieon. "This partnership enables Ultima's customers to gain additional efficiencies when generating high-quality sequencing data by lowering the cost of computing. During our collaboration, we've already seen significant improvements in sequencing quality, and look forward to continued optimization of our solutions."

Data from both the Sentieon and DeepVariant models will be shared at the upcoming AGBT conference June 6-9^th, 2022.

About Ultima Genomics
Genomics is unleashing the power of genomics at scale. The Company's mission is to continuously drive the scale of genomic information to enable unprecedented advances in biology and improvements in human health. With a virtually endless need for more genomic information to address biology's complexity and dynamic change, it is important to continue to challenge conventional next-generation sequencing technologies. Ultima has built a revolutionary new sequencing architecture designed to scale far beyond conventional technologies and overcome the cost-driven tradeoffs scientists and clinicians are forced to make between the breadth, depth and frequency with which they use genomic information. By driving down the costs of sequencing, Ultima hopes to catalyze the next phase of genomics in the 21st century.

About Google
Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. Through products and platforms like Search, Maps, Gmail, Android, Google Play, Chrome, and YouTube, Google plays a meaningful role in the daily lives of billions of people and has become one of the most widely-known companies in the world. Google is a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. For more information, visit our Google AI Blog.

About Sentieon
Sentieon® develops award-winning, extremely accurate and highly-optimized algorithms and software for bioinformatics data processing applications. Sentieon® is a team of professional engineers with deep expertise in algorithm, software, and system optimization acquired through experience developing image processing, computational lithography, large-scale data mining, and bioinformatics applications. Using our accumulated expertise in modeling, optimization, machine learning, and high-performance computing, we strive to enable precision data for precision medicine. Visit our website for more information.

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SOURCE Ultima Genomics