Oxford Nanopore Technologies plc (LON:ONT), the company delivering a new generation of nanopore-based molecular sensing technology, presented technology and platform updates at the Company’s flagship annual London Calling customer conference. During the sold-out event, with more than 4,500 registered online and in-person participants from more than 120 countries, the Company also provided updates to its long-term innovation pipeline.
Technology and pipeline updates included:
· Continued enhancement to product performance, reliability and competitiveness: The presentation highlighted the development of high throughput workflows, flow cell improvements and new kit chemistries to drive higher output on the PromethION Flow Cell.
· Improved analytics and insights for broad applications: Continued development of EPI2ME, the Company’s informatics platform which provides analysis tools for a growing menu of end-to-end workflows. Updates included (i) a new high-performance variant caller to increase consistency and accelerate workflows, especially in production environments where speed and reproducibility are key drivers and (ii) continued development of base modification calling, with more than ten modifications now supported. This enables improved accuracy of methylation detection, without the need for complex processes required with legacy sequencing technologies.
· Improving direct RNA sequencing, to accelerate biopharma workflows with a single streamlined platform: Recent updates to the cDNA kit and direct RNA workflows enable longer reads and higher output, delivering industry-leading performance supporting biopharma applications beyond mRNA Vaccine Quality Control, including drug discovery, sterility testing, and exploring tissue-specific RNA modifications.
· Near term focus on regulated product pipeline to driving adoption in applied markets: The GridION Q device is expected to complete CE-IVD submission in the EU for regulated clinical markets by the end of 2025. The device will be available for specified partners only. The Q-Line product range is expanding to include PromethION Q, now expected to launch in 2026, to broaden the opportunity for human sequencing applications.
· Ambitious and targeted long-term innovation pipeline: including the ongoing development of a new voltage-controlled ASIC for high throughput customers.
· A roadmap to proteomics: Oxford Nanopore is now making advancements into providing solutions for protein analysis, a key area for scientific research and discovery in health and substantial potential for applied uses in clinical and industrial applications. The Company is currently developing two complementary approaches: one focused on identifying native proteins in clinical samples, and another designed for scalable protein barcoding. Both workflows are in development, with future potential to enable the direct detection and characterisation of full-length proteins.
