Takara Bio USA and SPT Labtech have inked an agreement that will allow them to provide automated library preparation workflows that pair Takara Bio’s next-generation sequencing library prep chemistries with SPT Labtech’s firefly liquid handling platform. Under the terms of the partnership agreement, the companies will first optimize select SMART-seq^® RNA-seq library prep workflows, a new offering from Takara Bio, on SPT Labtech’s firefly with plans to ultimately expand to a growing menu of new RNA-seq, DNA-seq, and immune profiling kits.

The target customer base for the combined offering is NGS core labs and customers who prepare NGS libraries from a high volume of samples and need to expand their current capabilities. With the new offering, the company claims that these customers will have access to automation scripts to easily deploy workflows that can generate high-quality, reproducible sequencing data and that are easy to integrate into labs’ existing processes. The partners also note that SPT Labtech’s firefly does not require a large footprint, making it suitable for labs constrained by staffing, space, and cost.

Both partners will discuss the collaboration during this year’s annual meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics.

For Takara Bio, the partnership fits into a bigger picture. The company is incorporating automation as an integral part of an NGS technology launch package. The company plans to start shipping its SMART-Seq mRNA long read extended kit in January 2027. This will be the first product launched with an optimized workflow for the firefly instrument. Takara Bio claims that the combined products will help labs standardize long-read transcriptomics at scale while benefitting from greater input flexibility, better recovery of full-length transcripts, and greater quantification confidence among other benefits. Automation scripts are already available for download on the SPT cloud portal for two existing kits, SMART-Seq mRNA LP and SMART-Seq Total RNA Library Prep with ZapR^® Depletion with unique molecular identifiers.

Commenting on the partnership, Andrew Farmer, DPhil, president and CEO of Takara Bio USA, noted that the company is committed to making its NGS chemistries easier to implement at scale. “Through our collaboration with SPT Labtech, automation is becoming a foundational element of how we bring NGS products to market. As we introduce new library preparation technologies, customers can expect automated workflows to be built into the product experience from the start,” he said.

Paul Lomax, head of genomics at SPT Labtech, noted that by combining their products, both companies aim to help “more laboratories access the benefits of automated library preparation without the infrastructure requirements often associated with larger automation platforms.”