Time Is a Critical Factor When Evaluating Oligonucleotide Therapeutics in hERG Assays.

In accord with International Conference on Harmonization S7B guidelines, an human ether-a-go-go-related gene (hERG) assay is one component of an integrated risk assessment for delayed ventricular repolarization. Function of hERG could be affected by direct (acute) mechanisms, or by indirect (chronic) mechanisms. Some approved oligonucleotide therapeutics had submitted hERG data to regulatory agents, which were all collected with the same protocol used for small-molecule testing (incubation time <20 min; acute), however, oligonucleotides have unique mechanisms and time courses of action (indirect).

High-throughput full-length single-cell RNA-seq automation.

Existing protocols for full-length single-cell RNA sequencing produce libraries of high complexity (thousands of distinct genes) with outstanding sensitivity and specificity of transcript quantification. These full-length libraries have the advantage of allowing probing of transcript isoforms, are informative regarding single-nucleotide polymorphisms and allow assembly of the VDJ region of the T- and B-cell-receptor sequences. Since full-length protocols are mostly plate-based at present, they are also suited to profiling cell types where cell numbers are limiting, such as rare cell types during development.