Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc. and Illumina, Inc. announced an exclusive partnership to develop the most comprehensive next-generation sequencing (NGS) workflow for single-cell analysis. The end-to-end commercial solution will enable high-throughput sequencing of thousands of individual cells, traditionally a challenging, costly and time-consuming process. Using Bio-Rad's droplet partitioning technology and Illumina's leading NGS technologies, the new solution is optimized to isolate and barcode single cells for downstream sequencing.

Data analysis is conducted via BaseSpace, Illumina's cloud-based genomics computing environment. The solution will be scalable to isolate significantly larger numbers of single cells compared to commercially available solutions, in just a few minutes at a cost-effective price. The companies expect to launch the solution in late 2016 or early 2017.