SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Twist Bioscience Corporation (NASDAQ: TWST), a company enabling customers to succeed through its offering of high-quality synthetic DNA using its silicon platform, today announced the Twist Targeted Methylation Sequencing Solution to study methylation pattern changes in a wide range of research fields including cancer, epigenetics and non-invasive prenatal testing is now available for early access customers. In addition, the company announced the launch of its Twist Comprehensive Exome Panel, an optimal NGS target enrichment solution that includes more than 99% of protein coding genes.

Twist is highlighting these new solutions as well as customer testimonials at the 2020 Advances in Genome Biology and Technology (AGBT) meeting, held from February 23, 2020 to February 26, 2020, in Florida. During the meeting, several customers will demonstrate their use of Twist’s NGS target enrichment solutions for numerous clinical research applications.

“Our NGS products continue to meet and exceed our customers’ expectations; building on our high quality DNA that leads to uniform capture of the regions of interest results in more efficient sequencing, and ultimately better research,” said Emily M. Leproust, Ph.D., CEO and co-founder of Twist Bioscience. “We are thrilled to have our customers sharing their experiences in three burgeoning areas at AGBT: consumer genomics leveraging our target enrichment solution plus sequencing as a replacement for SNP microarray technology; initial uses in methylation research for the early detection of cancer; and the identification of residual leukemia. Building on these important use cases, we are committed to continue to deliver DNA-based products that interrogate biology and enable improved clinical outcomes.”

Customers Highlight their Results with Twist NGS Solutions

On Tuesday, February 25, 2020, three Twist customers will present their robust results after using the Twist NGS Target Enrichment Solutions for several important applications:

• Catherine Foo, Ph.D., Director of Laboratory Sciences, Ancestry “Launching an NGS assay for estimating genetic ancestry and providing health insights”
• Jesse Salk, M.D., Ph.D., CEO, TwinStrand Biosciences “Ultra-sensitive residual leukemia detection with patient-specific Duplex Sequencing”
• Gahee Park, Ph.D., University of Cambridge “Targeted epigenome sequencing of cell-free DNA to improve sensitivity for cancer early detection”

For more information, or to attend the session, please visit: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/twist-bioscience-at-agbt-2020-tickets-94043254907

New Product Introductions and Preview
Twist Comprehensive Exome Panel
Exome sequencing has become a widely-used practice in clinics and diagnostic labs. The Twist Comprehensive Exome Panel expands upon the content of the Twist Human Core Exome to include coverage of more than 99 percent of protein-coding genes from all three key public genetic databases: CCDS, RefSeq and GENCODE, providing best-in-class coverage of the most up-to-date content. In addition, the panel can be customized quickly and affordably. Because of the updated and comprehensive coverage, the new panel allows customers to increase confidence in variant detection experiments while enjoying maximum sequencing efficiency and best coverage uniformity. For more information on the Twist Comprehensive Exome Panel, visit https://www.twistbioscience.com/resources/twist-comprehensive-exome

Twist Targeted Methylation Sequencing Solution
DNA methylation plays a key role in many biological processes and disease. When a methyl group is added to a single nucleotide in a genetic sequence, it can change the gene’s behavior, even without changing the sequence. For example, when a methyl group is located in a gene promotor, it often acts to repress gene transcription into a protein. Methylation is a focus of current cancer research because it offers tremendous promise in understanding the physiology and pathology of disease as well as approaches for prevention and treatment of disease. Twist’s Targeted Methylation Solution offers a high-throughput, highly uniform target enrichment solution to explore methylation in a wide range of applications including epigenetic and oncology research. This product is available for early access customers today. More information can be found here: https://www.twistbioscience.com/resources/targeted-methylation-sequencing

About the Twist NGS Target Enrichment Solutions

Applying its proprietary silicon-based DNA synthesis platform, Twist Bioscience manufactures double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) that is incorporated into sample preparation products for customers performing next-generation sequencing experiments and analysis. Because Twist is able to apply its custom oligonucleotide pools to precisely target, extract, and uniformly amplify the target DNA segments, its NGS target enrichment solutions considerably improve the accuracy of the downstream sequencing analysis. This enables customers to perform fewer sequencing runs per sample, without sacrificing accuracy, saving time and money. This product suite is designed to provide exceptional performance, maximum sequencing efficiency and improved uniform coverage along with the flexibility to customize kit configuration.

Twist Bioscience believes it is the only company to offer double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) probes within a comprehensive target enrichment kit used for exome and targeted sequencing. Using dsDNA as opposed to single-stranded DNA allows specified sequences to be uniformly captured and reduces deamination (removal of an amino group). Deamination interferes with the accurate detection of gene mutations, and may distort genetic results and hinder clinical diagnoses, particularly in cancer and ancient samples. For more information please visit: https://www.twistbioscience.com/products/ngs.

Twist NGS Solutions are indicated for Research Use Only.

About Twist Bioscience Corporation

Twist Bioscience is a leading and rapidly growing synthetic biology company that has developed a disruptive DNA synthesis platform to industrialize the engineering of biology. The core of the platform is a proprietary technology that pioneers a new method of manufacturing synthetic DNA by “writing” DNA on a silicon chip. Twist is leveraging its unique technology to manufacture a broad range of synthetic DNA-based products, including synthetic genes, tools for next-generation sequencing (NGS) preparation, and antibody libraries for drug discovery and development. Twist is also pursuing longer-term opportunities in digital data storage in DNA and biologics drug discovery. Twist makes products for use across many industries including healthcare, industrial chemicals, agriculture and academic research.

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Legal Notice Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements. All statements other than statements of historical facts contained herein, including without limitation, the ability of the Twist Comprehensive Exome Panel to provide users with confidence in variant detection experiments while enjoying maximum sequencing efficiency and improved coverage uniformity and the availability of the Twist Targeted Methylation Sequencing Solution to early access customers, are forward-looking statements reflecting the current beliefs and expectations of management made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other important factors that may cause Twist Bioscience’s actual results, performance, or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance, or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Such risks and uncertainties include, among others, the risk of breach of Twist’s security measures, the risks and uncertainties of the ability to attract new customers and retain and grow sales from existing customers; risks and uncertainties of rapidly changing technologies and extensive competition in synthetic biology could make the products Twist Bioscience is developing obsolete or non-competitive; uncertainties of the retention of a significant customer; risks of third party claims alleging infringement of patents and proprietary rights or seeking to invalidate Twist Bioscience’s patents or proprietary rights; and the risk that Twist Bioscience’s proprietary rights may be insufficient to protect its technologies. For a further description of the risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ from those expressed in these forward-looking statements, as well as risks relating to Twist Bioscience’s business in general, see Twist Bioscience’s risk factors set forth in Twist Bioscience’s Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on February 10, 2020. Any forward-looking statements contained in this press release speak only as of the date hereof, and Twist Bioscience specifically disclaims any obligation to update any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

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