Chad Pollard from Wasatch BioLabs spoke at the Biopharma Day at NCM Boston. The session’s title was “NESSI-Seq: novel cfDNA methylation assays for biomarker discovery and precision medicine.” Pollard described Wasatch BioLabs as a high-throughput nanopore sequencing lab. NESSI-Seq is a methylation analysis method. They developed a method to provide more methylation information than the existing panels. Pollard also explained that the goal was to create an approach using the Nanopore platform that provided more coverage and better resolution. They described it as “Native MethylSeq.” In the cell-free approach, the challenge to overcome was the fragmented DNA. Pollard and the team came up with a method that is a proprietary library prep optimized for low input and fixes the nicks. Pollard compared MethylSeq and the EPIC array, focusing on the CpG islands. The single-molecule resolution comparison highlights how they can analyze single-read methylation patterns. To increase biomarker discovery, Pollard and the team developed a pipeline to identify biomarkers from neurons to differentiate ALS, Parkinson’s, and Alzheimer’s. The goal of the is to develop a single bioassay. With cfWGMS NESSI-Seq allows for robust copy number variation and cell type differentiation. To help clients develop biomarker discovery, the WBL team created a methylseqR bioinformatics tool. A bed file is uploaded, and several analyses can be performed. According to Pollard, positional summaries with a sample set of 48 and 50X coverage can be done in a minute on a laptop. Pollard mentioned at the end that he is a Ph.D. student at BYU! This very interesting session encouraged me to explore methylation applications and tools.
