At the heart of next generation sequencing (NGS)

NGS enables better patient care – from research to diagnosis, treatment, and disease prevention.

Tecan's products and technologies are embedded in every step of the NGS ecosystem of activities, from sequencing providers, reagent suppliers, basic research institutions, genetic testing and clinical reference laboratories to in-vitro diagnostics companies. This deep integration enables us to scale healthcare innovation globally on a broad scale. We empower NGS sample and library preparation for greater consistency, speed, throughput, and increased efficiency. In addition, automation can work with smaller quantities of reagents, which makes it more sustainable and helps to save costs.

Tecan improves the preparation workflows for various sequencing technologies and works with many industry-leading companies for short-read and long-read sequencing. Our sample prep solutions are suitable for broad sequencing to explore the genome, as well as for targeted sequencing to identify known genetic mutations in a patient. We understand the essential position that the major NGS companies occupy in the research and clinical world and work with them every day to empower workflows and increase efficiencies.

One noteworthy example is Tecan's partnership with Oxford Nanopore, a leading biotechnology company specializing in the development and commercialization of Nanopore sequencing technology. This alliance enabled automated, seamless, and fully compatible preparation of Nanopore sequencing libraries for fragments of native DNA/RNA of any length – an important complement to sequencing platforms and protocols that sequence short fragments in the 300 to 600 base-pair range.

The initial collaboration between Oxford Nanopore and Tecan enabled high-throughput library preparation on Tecan's DreamPrep® NGS platform. Then, in December 2023, Oxford Nanopore announced the beta launch of the TurBOT sample-to-answer device developed in partnership with Tecan. This innovation promises to bring a new level of convenience and reliability to Oxford Nanopore's customers, ultimately enabling information obtained through nanopore sequencing to benefit more patients in areas such as infectious diseases and oncology. These collaborations are a great example of synergies between the Life Sciences Business and Partnering Business!

Another shining example of Tecan’s contribution to scaling genomics in healthcare is the development of the MagicPrep® NGS system – a new category of automated laboratory instrument that enables easy preparation of NGS libraries for Illumina as well as other sequencing platforms. MagicPrep NGS has been customized to the specific chemistries and offers a convenient solution that is as easy as brewing a cup of coffee in a fully automatic machine. Instead of having to deal with a large-scale front-end, you simply insert your samples, press the button, and get your results. MagicPrep NGS introduces a new level of simplicity, helping to drive overall adoption of sequencing, so that the prospect of personalized medicine becomes a reality.

The tedious and error-prone manual pipetting involved in preparing libraries for NGS is now a thing of the past. To start a MagicPrep NGS run takes less than 10 minutes, with reagent and sample loading as the only steps. The simple system offers true walkaway automation while being user-friendly, reliable, and reproducible. It is compact enough to fit on the lab bench and very easy to set up. As a result, the average turnaround time for DNA workflows is now just over five hours and over 10 hours for RNA, allowing any lab to easily perform two DNA prep runs per day.