Hitachi High-Tech acquires majority interest in Nabsys

Hitachi High-Tech Corporation (Hitachi High- Tech) and Nabsys announced that Hitachi High-Tech has acquired a majority interest in Nabsys, a developer and manufacturer of instrumentation and consumables for the analysis of genomic structural variation. This transaction will make Nabsys a consolidated subsidiary of Hitachi High-Tech Group.

Hitachi High-Tech first invested in and formed an alliance with Nabsys in 2019 to fully realize the promise of genomics and improve human health through a scalable platform capable of interrogating structural variants (SVs). Through thesupport of Hitachi High-Tech, Nabsys has entered into a commercialization phase with the ‘OhmX Analyzer (OhmX)’, an electronic genome mapping platform for high-resolution SV analysis.

OhmX uses a high signal-to-noise electronic detection methodology in which solid-state nanochannels measure the shapes of long DNA molecules traveling at high speeds. OhmX 's use of electronic detection keeps the instrument footprint small (about the size of a desktop computer) and the cost of SV analysis low. When combined with HCE, the system captures and visualizes SVs at small enoughlength scales to be complimentary to short-read sequencing, with reads long enough to capture large structural rearrangements.

By making Nabsys a consolidated subsidiary, Hitachi High-Tech group aims to accelerate the adoption of OhmX, and envisions the technology will substantively evolve to address critical diagnostic, prognostic, and therapeutic research gaps while promising to strengthening itsmolecular diagnostics business as part of its mission to create a society without fear of cancer and rare disease. In addition to strengthening Nabsys' development and production, Hitachi High-Tech will combine the platform with its data analysis technology to scale and expand electronic genome mapping globally.