The Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS) and Fluidigm Corporation (FLDM) have established GIS-Fluidigm Single-Cell 'Omics Center (SCOC) to speed up the understanding of how individual cells work and how diagnosis and treatment might be improved through insight derived from single cells.
The center will combine molecular and cell biologists to provide them with genomics and genotypic data for assessment of biological pathways, disease mechanisms and the characterization of healthy and diseased tissues.
The SCOC will also provide single-cell analytics to drug discovery firms, pharmaceutical and biotech companies, academia and clinics as well as to provide single-cell infrastructure across Singapore and Asia, which will employ various disciplines in an adaptive multi-source platform.
As part of the first projects, the center will try to define early embryonic cellular state spaces using single-cell transcriptomics through mRNA sequencing.
Housed at laboratory space at GIS facilities in Biopolis, Singapore, the center will feature Fluidigm's new C1Single-Cell Auto Prep System and the Fluidigm BioMark HD System as well as access to various NGS capabilities for sequencing.
GIS executive director Ng Huck Hui said, "This larger and very important collaboration will see an even greater synergy between the technologies from GIS and Fluidigm."
Fluidigm president and chief executive officer Gajus Worthington said, "GIS has a track record of publishing breakthroughs based upon single-cell research, so this center can act as an accelerant for more new science."
SCOC is expected to act as culminating point for collaborative efforts among single-cell genomics researchers across Asia.
