Company History

Generation Biotech is a privately held biotechnology company in Lawrenceville, NJ that develops tools for complex DNA analysis. Experience in single molecule analysis and single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) typing led to the development of a molecular haplotyping method (HSE) for separating the maternal and paternal copies from a patient's genomic DNA sample using magnetic particles.

The method was first used at Princeton University and subsequently automated to make the process simple, reliable and accessible to many users. Through a collaboration with Genovision, Inc., HSE was focused on the medical needs of the tissue typing/organ donor community. HSE was then commercialized through Genovision Inc. as a method for resolving all genotyping ambiguities found in the Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA) gene region. Qiagen Inc. holds an exclusive license for the use of HSE in tissue typing applications through its acquisition of Genovision in 2003.

Generation Biotech continues to develop new technologies for the separation of genomic DNA. Region Specific Extraction (RSE) has recently been developed to capture whole gene regions and has led to an entirely new technique (TSE) for mapping copy number and transposable genetic elements. These new technologies will advance the efforts of complex disease association studies and whole genome re-sequencing efforts.

Company Timeline

2000:Generation Biotech LLC established
2001:Initial development of Haplotype Specific Extraction (HSE)
2002:Phase I SBIR grant awarded for HSE technology development HSE technology licensed to Genovision, Inc.
2003:Qiagen, Inc. acquires exclusive HSE license for tissue typing
2004:$3 million dollar SBIR Phase II grant awarded for HSE/tissue typing
2005:Qiagen releases first HSE/HLA tissue typing products to market
2006:Transposon mapping (TSE) in yeast developed
2007:Qiagen releases full range of HSE/HLA allele separation products

Generation Biotech serves the research community through the application of its current technologies for extracting and analyzing genomic DNA. The company continually seeks to develop new technologies through its scientific collaborations, grant applications and educational associations. The company supports the work of local universities in developing programs to expose students to challenging scientific problems that result in commercially relevant products.

On-going efforts include new methods and instrumentation for the detection of structural variation within whole genomes. Compared to traditional cytogenetic methods, this new focus is designed to provide better tools to detect, diagnose and classify structural variations in individual organisms