Arima Genomics completes early access program and launches the Arima-HiC platform

Company introduces enhanced Arima-HiC product offering to drive greater insights for chromatin conformation and genome assembly studies.

SAN DIEGO– Arima Genomics, Inc., a biotechnology company empowering researchers to apply long-range genetic sequence and structure information towards the understanding of health, disease and species evolution, announced today the full commercial launch of its Arima-HiC technology. The Arima-HiC sample preparation kit is a simple and rapid 6-hour protocol that enables detection of long-range chromatin interactions that can be used across multiple applications. The public launch brings to a close a successful Early Access Program that yielded further proof of product performance and valuable feedback from early access customers.

The limited scale of operation of the Early Access Program allowed the company to work closely with customers, leading to an enhanced Arima-HiC offering. “We have been very happy with the Arima-HiC kit,” said Eileen Furlong PhD, Head of the Genome Biology Unit at EMBL. “The Arima-HiC protocol is days quicker than our previous lab’s protocol. All together, better quality data for less effort.” In response to customer needs for low sample input studies, the Arima-HiC kit now enables researchers to generate high-quality Hi-C libraries from less than 100K cells, depending on the application. “We are pleased with the ease of the Arima-HiC workflow and the improved data quality for topological domain and chromatin looping analysis,” said Hiruy Meharena PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “The expanded support for low input is a significant feature as it allows researchers to perform Hi-C across precious samples such as rare cell populations or clinical samples that were previously precluded from Hi-C analysis.”

To facilitate data analysis, the company collaborated with academic partners to optimize established open-source tools, including HiCUP and SALSA for Arima-HiC data. These tools leverage unique aspects of Arima-HiC data, such as greater coverage uniformity and higher long-range signal-to-noise ratio, for improved chromatin conformation and genome assembly analysis. Such engagement with the open source community will continue to be a key focus for the company as part of its sustained efforts to streamline and expedite the sample-to-results workflow. The company is also continuing to work with key academic collaborators on targeted Hi-C approaches along with developing workflows for new genomic applications with industry partner Agilent Technologies.

Feedback and data generated by early access customers also played an important role in further validating the Arima-HiC technology. Recently, the first dataset from Phase I of the Vertebrate Genome Project that leveraged Arima-HiC technology was released. “Arima Genomics is an integral technology partner of the G10K consortium and Phase I of the VGP project,” Gene Myers PhD, G10K Council Member and Director at Max-Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, Dresden. “Arima was selected for Phase I based on the quality of their data, proven by their ability to generate reproducible and high-quality data despite variability in input sample quality and quantity. The long-range genomic interactions from Arima-HiC data is an essential component of our current strategy for the generation of chromosome-spanning reference assemblies.”

In addition to high-quality genome assemblies, other labs demonstrated the ability to detect chromatin loops and topologically associated domains (TADs) with high confidence at significantly reduced depth of sequencing compared to other methods. “The ability of Arima-HiC kits to deliver greater insight with less sequencing cost will be critical in enabling more researchers to leverage Hi-C technology for understanding gene regulation within the three-dimensional context of the genome,” said Changhoon Kim PhD, Chief Technology Officer at Macrogen, Inc.

As part of the company’s transition out of early access phase, it has scaled its operations to make the Arima-HiC technology easily accessible to researchers. In addition to expanding its sales team, it has streamlined its order-to-ship process, and enhanced its customer service and support experience. “The commercial launch of the Arima-HiC kit marks a significant milestone in the company’s mission to accelerate the understanding of genome sequence and structure” said Siddarth Selvaraj, Arima Genomics founder and CEO. “Our goal in this next phase is to enable researchers to gain more insight from the genome by making Hi-C technology as accessible, affordable, and easy-to-use as possible.”