TWINSTRAND BIOSCIENCES INC.

Company Overview

TwinStrand Biosciences, founded in 2015 as a spin-out from the University of Washington, is developing and commercializing duplex sequencing technology for use in liquid biopsy diagnostics, among other applications.

The duplex sequencing method tags both strands of DNA with random, complementary primers. These tagged strands are then amplified by PCR. Post-sequencing, the DNA strands can be grouped by their tags and compared. If errors are introduced via PCR or sequencing, they can be excluded by putting a threshold on the number of matches that are expected to be found. Finally, the tags are matched with their complementary tags and evaluated, excluding any remaining errors.

This method results in more accurate sequencing (reducing the sequencing error rate to less than one in ten million), allowing detection of low level, rare mutations. Applications for this sequencing technique include detection of residual disease in patients being treated for blood cancers, and the detection of emerging drug resistance in those patients.

TwinStrand is developing reagent kits to enable researchers to use the Duplex sequencing method. These kits include for the early detection of ovarian cancer, residual disease detection in leukemia, detection of early resistance to targeted cancer drugs, and genotoxicity testing.

In November 2020, TwinStrand licensed its duplex sequencing correction technology to Foundation Medicine, a subsidiary of Roche. The technology is useful for detecting ultra-low frequency DNA mutations that would otherwise be obscured. The license agreement covers two foundational patent families from TwinStrand.

Company's Business Segments

• Biotechnology : The company provides genomic technology across disciplines such as clinical medicines and life science to improve human health.