BGI's MGI Tech Launches Two New NGS Platforms

Early Evaluators Report Faster Sequencing and Consistent Quality at a Lower Cost

SHENZHEN, China, Oct. 31, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- MGI Tech, a subsidiary corporation of BGI, launched two new next generation genetic sequencers, MGISEQ-2000 and MGISEQ-200, at the 12th International Conference on Genomics (ICG-12) in Shenzhen. The products were unveiled at the conference, held at the China National GeneBank from Oct. 26 - 29 with the theme "Omics for All -- Global Partnership." MGI also launched a modular NGS workstation, MGIFLP, as well as a robotic ultrasound system, MGIUS-R3.

Before the product launch, BGI President Jian Wang gave the opening address. He said he hoped the new products could be affordable and benefit people all over the world, summing up his intention to "lower the price, save the life."

MGI Vice-President Hui Jiang said the new sequencers will deliver consistent high quality sequencing data faster and at a lower price. MGISEQ 200/2000 are upgrades to BGISEQ 50/500 with technological improvements.

"MGISEQ-2000 and MGISEQ-200 can complete one run with PE100 read length in less than 48 hours, which provides partners high-quality service and data even more rapidly to benefit patients," Jiang said.

"We have made significant improvements in the industrial design of the sequencers and optimized the chemistry, which will allow our customers to operate the sequencers in their labs at a lower cost," said Jian Liu, MGI Vice President. MGISEQ-2000 and MGISEQ-200 can run with at least four different read lengths, providing flexibility to cover a wide variety of applications across genomic research, clinical diagnosis, agriculture, forensics and environmental engineering. "With our R&D team's great efforts, we managed to make sequencing more affordable and of better quality and performance," he said.

Several partners involved in early testing of the new technology said it demonstrates significant improvements over existing technology.

MGI Tech's overall goal is to make the MGISEQ a versatile and open sequencing platform, said MGI CEO Feng Mu. MGI plans to release sequencing adapters and the test data to encourage users to develop their own applications on the MGISEQ platform.

"This will help us to speed up technology development and production and to provide better tools and services to our customers," Mu said. "Our goal is to innovate new technologies to help people live a healthy life. That's why 'Omics for All" is the important theme of this year's ICG."

MGISEQ-2000 and MGISEQ-200 will be available for orders beginning from Dec. 25, 2017, and will start shipment from Feb. 14, 2018, initially in China.

About MGI

MGI (MGI Tech Co., Limited) is a part of BGI Group, one of the world's largest genomics organizations. As the equipment supporting platform of BGI, MGI is dedicated to developing, manufacturing and distributing instruments, reagents and devices/assays through innovation and collaboration. Since its acquisition of CGI (Complete Genomics Inc.), MGI has built upon its technologies to rapidly develop a new series of genetic sequencers, including BGISEQ-1000, BGISEQ-500, and BGISEQ-50. MGI's mission is to "Make a Great Instrument and Make It Smart" to provide a real-time, digitized panoramic view of living things and advance life science to service genomics, proteomics and beyond.