History

In 2015, SeqCenter’s founding team worked together within the walls of an academic lab at the University of Pittsburgh and began sequencing their own samples after consistently being frustrated with the pace, cost, and difficulty of obtaining sequencing data from existing vendors. After perfecting methodologies to allow for the economical sequencing of microbes, they offered the services to colleagues and collaborators. The quickly growing interest from peers indicated they had developed a viable commodity; however, policies that govern not-for-profit academic institutions made a successful business model unattainable within university walls. Hence, in October 2019, the team formed a privately owned business.

Though initially heavily focused on microbial sequencing, SeqCenter evolved to meet the growing demand of customers and the market. With a move to a new 10,000-square-foot facility and installation of all of the highest throughput sequencing instruments (NovaSeq X, Revio, PromethION), SeqCenter now offers sequencing services to a global customer base and is able to provide services for any organism and from most sample types.

Despite our growth, we still hold true to our original aims:

Aim 1

Provide the speed of service that we wanted as researchers.

We understand that research is often performed through iteration and firmly believe the speed of our services should never bottleneck your work. We maintain a facility that processes samples without a backlog and expand our capacity as needed to ensure this. SeqCenter guarantees sequencing and data delivery within two weeks of receiving your samples.

Aim 2

Offer transparent pricing models that allow all researchers to incorporate sequencing into their work.

The cost of sequencing shouldn’t be a black box secretly calculated on a customer-by-customer basis, and it shouldn’t only be affordable to those with large projects that fill flowcells. Our pricing is published on our website, and we implement methods that allow us to provide sequencing to labs of all sizes, including undergraduate-serving colleges, with services suitable for large-scale analysis or small classes without straining limited budgets. Whether you have one bacterial sample or 1,000 human genomes, SeqCenter can accommodate your project.

Aim 3

Lower the barrier of entry to genomic research.

We know it is challenging for researchers who are unfamiliar with analyzing next-generation sequencing (NGS) data to incorporate it into their studies. We believe NGS results can benefit a broad range of research, from confirming engineered mutants are otherwise isogenic to deeper studies of population dynamics or microbiome composition, and we hope to facilitate labs with no previous experience to take the first steps. We use leading, open-source software written by world-class researchers to produce user-friendly output for customers. We also provide even the most novice user with the means to generate and analyze their own sequencing data in hopes of making this highly useful method accessible to every lab.

Contact:
91 43rd Street, Ste. 250
Pittsburgh, PA 15201
(878) 227-4915

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