Sigma-Aldrich Signs Exclusive Agreement with Rubicon Genomics to Commercialize Transplex™

Sigma-Aldrich has announced an exclusive licensing agreement with Rubicon Genomics to further develop and commercialize their TransPlex™ Whole Transcriptome Amplification (WTA) technology.

The TransPlex technology is a method which can be used for amplifying total RNA from a variety of sample sources such as animals, plants, and micro-organisms.

Under the terms of the agreement, Rubicon retains all rights to TransPlex™ for molecular diagnostics.

"We are excited to have this opportunity to expand our relationship with Rubicon," said Keith Jolliff, Director of Marketing for Genomics and Functional Genomics.

"Sigma-Aldrich is committed to bringing best-in-class- technologies to the genomic research community, and the TransPlex™ Whole Transcriptome Amplification kit is clearly in that category."

John Langmore, VP of Commercial Development at Rubicon, said: "Rubicon is very pleased that Sigma-Aldrich will be marketing TransPlex kits to complement the very successful GenomePlex® Whole Genome Amplification kits. We have confidence that their customers will embrace TransPlex for biological research and development of diagnostic products."

TransPlex WTA is designed to create a cDNA library from the isolated RNA template and to amplify the library in a single PCR reaction as the TransPlex reagents and protocols are optimized to ensure a linear representation of all expressed genes and exons that allow RNA samples to be amplified 1,000-10,000 fold in less than four hours.

This technology is made to work well even when the RNA is partially degraded, as in formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tissue.