Westborough-based GenomeQuest said it has awarded six $20,000-grants to laboratories around the country, including UMass Memorial Medical Center and UMass Medical School here in Worcester, to transition to a more advanced method of genetic testing.
GenomeQuest, which makes genomic software applications, said the labs in Massachsuetts, Ohio, New Jersey and Nebraska will receive software and services that will allow them to move to “next generation sequencing” (NGS) based tests, which the company says can make rare genetic disorder diagnoses using less money and time than so-called Sanger-based gene tests.
For example, the University of Iowa consolidated 20 Sanger-based tests into a single NGS test, reducing the cost of molecular diagnosis from $75,000 to $2,000 and the total time from 12 months to five weeks, according to GenomeQuest.
