Twist Bioscience

What if a negative test isn't the end of the story? When standard PCR tests couldn't identify the virus behind a deadly hemorrhagic fever outbreak, researchers needed a broader approach. Using Twist's Comprehensive Viral Panel and whole genome sequencing, scientists identified the rare Bundibugyo Ebola strain which provided the insights needed to help guide the public health response. Tools are only as powerful as our understanding of their limitations. A test result is data. Clinical judgment provides context. As biology becomes more precise, our responsibility is not just to build better tools, but to understand when they succeed, when they fail, and what we need to ask next. Read about what we can do to be prepared for future hemorrhagic fever outbreaks and infectious disease surveillance here: https://lnkd.in/d7TPRrKY Emily Leproust, Twist Bioscience, BioPharma BoardRoom

A new study from the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, published in Nature Genetics, demonstrates a low-cost exome sequencing approach called BGE (Blended Genome Exome). Why this matters: 🧬 Large cohorts become more feasible 💡 Rare variant discovery becomes more accessible 🧠 Mental health genetics gains statistical power 🔬 Researchers can ask bigger questions with richer genomic data We're proud that Twist Bioscience Exome was used in this work, helping researchers generate the high-quality data needed to study rare genetic variants across massive cohorts. Read the article “Low-cost genome sequencing approach is powering genetics research on mental illness and many other studies” here: https://lnkd.in/dDDGV_yE Read the paper “A blended genome and exome sequencing method captures genetic variation in an unbiased and cost-effective manner” here: https://lnkd.in/dZSNQ2ip Authors: Julia Sealock, Toni Boltz, Cal Liao, and Benjamin Chu

👀 MRD and cancer researchers: This new substack from James Hadfield focuses on “exploring the enabling technologies that could fundamentally democratize MRD testing, moving it out of large centralised labs and into community oncology centres near patients.” We are thrilled to see our MRD Express included in the blog “Democratizing MRD” found here: https://lnkd.in/eyerxFnm Learn more about Twist MRD Express: https://lnkd.in/e95nigM5 MRD Express: Rapid, scalable, and high-performance custom target enrichment for minimal residual disease monitoring: https://lnkd.in/e-YszC6F Twist Bioscience

Did you see Josh Kerr destroy the men’s mile world record? 3 minutes and 42.66 seconds… He’s fast, and you know what else is fast? Twist Express offerings! 🏃♂️ Fast track (get it?) your research with Twist: • Clonal Genes made in the US to your specifications and shipped to you in as few as 4 days.* • Gene Fragments shipped in 2-4 business days* • 10s to 1000s of IgG and VHH antibodies in as few as 2 weeks. With fast production time and quality like this, you can expect speed and precision for all applications including antibody engineering, drug discovery research, mRNA synthesis, and many more. Express Genes: https://lnkd.in/dRWb6Vg5 Gene Fragments: https://lnkd.in/gHdKEPNU Express Antibodies: https://lnkd.in/d9R2jwgq Watch Josh Kerr here: https://lnkd.in/ddRswbpR Twist Bioscience

What if ultra-sensitive cancer detection no longer needed a room-sized sequencer? I've just published a new blog on my Substack exploring the enabling technologies that could fundamentally democratize MRD testing, moving it out of large centralised labs and into community oncology centres near patients. In the post I cover: Biofidelity Enspyre: work led by Rita Zhou and Paul Labrousse in my team, presented at AACR 2026. They showed a 98% reduction in sequencing requirements that could bring ultra-sensitive MRD to a benchtop NextSeq. Twist Bioscience MRD Express: a 24-hour personalised panel turnaround that closes the TAT gap between tumour-informed and tumour-naive approaches. Syndex Bio: methylation-preserving PCR that sidesteps the destructive bisulfite conversion bottleneck. Amplifyer Bio an engineered in vivo priming agent delivering up to 100-fold increases in ctDNA recovery from a standard blood draw. I see this technology as somewhat analogous to a contrast agents for MRI, where the Gadolinium dramatically improves the detail of soft tissues and tumors, but this contrast agent for ctDNA boosts the signal we can detect using standard liquid biopsy techniques. The question I leave open: if you stacked these technologies in a single workflow, would the sensitivity gains be additive or truly multiplicative? Read the full post on Substack, link in comments. #liquidbiopsy #MRD #ctDNA #oncology #genomics #cancerdetection

Emerging Technologies Aim to Democratize Ultra-Sensitive MRD Testing -James Hadfield Biofidelity Twist Bioscience Syndex Bio Amplifyer Bio Rita Zhou Paul Labrousse https://lnkd.in/dNQCWaDT #OncoDaily #Oncology #Cancer #Health #Medicine

Anyone following the World Cup? 🏆 If so, respond with an emoji of which team you're rooting for! ⚽ Since Twist is a data-driven company, we leaned in and conducted an informal poll… Twisters from around the world weighed in about who they are cheering on, and the results are in: 🥇🥈For the championship: 61% are hoping for a Spain win 39% want Argentina to take 1st 🥉For 3rd place: 20% of Twisters are rooting for France (sorry Emily Leproust) 80% of Twisters would like an England win While our favorite teams may differ, one thing unites us every day: working together across countries, cultures, and time zones to accelerate the pace of scientific discovery with synthetic DNA.

You know the pride you feel when your child, spouse, or best friend is recognized for a success? That’s how we’re feeling about our Twist Exome 2.0 in this new benchmarking paper from José Luis Villanueva Cañas, PhD and team. 😊 “Notably, Twist Exome 2.0 capture consistently delivered superior results for DNA extracted from non-peripheral blood tissues. This study suggests that Twist Exome 2.0 provides robust performance and is particularly well-suited for samples where DNA quality may be compromised due to preanalytical limitations.” If you have tough samples, we have the exome for you! 🧬 Read the paper here: https://lnkd.in/dM-aMfE5 Find our exome here: https://lnkd.in/gJ_VCfmu Twist Bioscience

You’ve probably read the open letter in support of mandatory nucleic acid synthesis screening from AI giants like Google DeepMind, OpenAI, Microsoft, Anthropic, etc. Alongside that effort, real progress is being made in voluntary screening, and there is a new paper out in Frontiers this week. A team including members from Microsoft, IBBIS, IGSC, Battelle, Twist Bioscience, and more test biosecurity screening down to oligo-lengths with AI-engineered sequences. Advances in AI are challenging current biosecurity screening approaches, so staying ahead of emerging risks is more important than ever. Read what the team uncovered here: https://lnkd.in/de6Q_eeF Twist Bioscience, Eric Horvitz, Tessa Alexanian🔸, Bruce Wittmann, James Diggans, Nicole Wheeler, Microsoft, International Biosecurity and Biosafety Initiative for Science (IBBIS), Battelle

Let’s be honest: benchmarking NGS kits is not the "sexy" side of genomics 🧬 . However, in clinical diagnostics, this "boring" science is exactly what stands between a successful diagnosis and a failed run 🫣. Our new paper in *IJMS* didn’t start as a grand, theoretical academic project. It started out of pure practical necessity in our lab at the Molecular Biology Core of Centre de Diagnòstic Biomèdic (CDB) - Hospital Clínic de Barcelona. We simply needed to know which commercial Whole Exome Sequencing (WES) kit would actually hold up when handed suboptimal, non-blood clinical samples like amniotic fluid, prenatal tissues, fibroblasts, or dried blood spots. So, we ran an internal comparison testing three major commercial WES kits against each other using the challenging, real-world samples we see in our daily routine. But here was the catch: you can't just compare these kits out of the box because every manufacturer defines "whole exome" differently. To make a fair, clinically meaningful comparison, we had to standardize the entire playing field. We built a unified target using over 4,100 disease-associated "green" genes from PanelApp UK, and established a consistent framework using clinical metrics, like evaluating coverage at a true diagnostic threshold of 38x instead of just relying on uninformative average depths. The data from this standardized evaluation was clear enough that we realized we had to share it. On top of that I always wanted to use radar plots in a publication :) This is what we saw: **Suboptimal samples are the real test:** While standard blood samples are easy to sequence, only one specific capture kit consistently handled compromised, non-peripheral blood DNA with far greater resilience. **Real-world diagnostic coverage:** This kit reached a 93% coverage rate at our strict diagnostic threshold of 38x across clinical genes, whereas the other options moved around 80%. **Efficiency gains:** It halved duplication rates to 8%, meaning much less sequencing throughput is wasted. **Navigating "dark" regions:** In 795 highly challenging, disease-associated regions that are notoriously difficult to sequence, this same kit successfully covered 23.3% of their length at diagnostic depth, compared to just 14-16% for the other two options. In a hospital core facility, the choice of enrichment chemistry is one of the most vital decisions you can make. Hopefully, our hands-on data saves other teams some troubleshooting and helps maximize your diagnostic yield. Huge congrats to the entire team at Hospital Clínic and all our co-authors, specially Edgard Verdura and Aina Montalban! Read the open-access paper to reveal the identity of the winner kit: https://lnkd.in/eb_P6iXM