PGT retains exclusive rights to develop and commercialize VeriTag™ for applications in human infectious disease diagnostics, and non-exclusive rights for veterinary diagnostics and plant genomic uses. VeriTag™ is a PGT proprietary technology that allows for the sensitive and confident detection of minority genetic variants on next generation sequencing platforms to levels below 0.1%.
Commenting on the deal, Population Genetics CEO Alan Schafer said, “VeriTag™ technology provides significant advantage in applications where it is essential to confidently identify low level mutations, such as clinical detection of drug resistance mutations; VeriTags’™ uses are broad and will increasingly be applied in diverse contexts such as cancer and metagenomic applications. Agilent represents the ideal commercialization partner for us because of their global reach and cross-platform business model”.