Asuragen Heritage

Asuragen Services utilizes world-leading RNA expertise to provide the best data quality and fastest possible turn-around time to the biopharmaceutical and research communities.  We offer a range of services for isolation, quantification, and data analysis of RNA to provide the highest quality and most reproducible data attainable.  Based on our experience, we can assist in selection of the methods most appropriate to the client’s needs. Asuragen is a fully licensed service provider for Affymetrix® GeneChips®, Illumina® Sentrix® BeadArrays, Applied Biosystems TaqMan® products, and Ambion® microRNA arrays, and respects the intellectual property rights of others.  Asuragen’s service capabilities include processes and conditions under which laboratory activities may be planned, performed, monitored, and reported to comply with relevant cGLP requirements of 21CFR Part 58. 


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Our staff has decades of cumulative array target preparation experience and RNA isolation experience with a broad range of human samples. Our bioinformatics group is equipped and experienced with current tools and “best practices” experience for gene expression profiling, pathway analysis, and biomarker discovery and validation. We are committed to providing our clients with superior service in the areas summarized in the following list:


  • Nucleic Acid Isolations (RNA,DNA)

  • Gene Expression Analysis (mRNA Profiling)
    • Affymetrix gene expression profiling as an authorized Affymetrix Service Provider
    • Illumina gene expression profiling as an authorized CSPro™ Service Provider
    • Illumina DASL® mRNA profiling for FFPE (fixed) tissues
    • Applied Biosystems TaqMan mRNA Assays

  • MicroRNA (miRNA) Expression Analysis
    • Applied Biosystems TaqMan microRNA assays
    • Ambion/Affymetrix-based DiscovArray™ profiling service

  • Data Analysis/Bioinformatics
    • Standardized raw data delivery and organization
    • Routine statistical analysis of single-variable experiments (ANOVA or t-test) with html-formatted data delivery for quick access to graphical and tabular results
    • Customized statistical analysis or machine learning as required by the end-user

  • Pathway Analysis
    • GSEA (Gene Set Enrichment Algorithm) from the Broad Institute at MIT and Harvard
    • Various other public and commercial tools, as best suited to the application

Asuragen Services has master laboratory service agreements in place with many of the world’s largest pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. We serve a large and diverse customer base and have been engaged on hundreds of discrete projects ranging in size from six samples to many thousand. We have performed thousands of RNA isolations on over 100 unique human tissues, processed thousands of Affymetrix arrays, and have corporate experience in the performance and the technical foundation of the MessageAmp® RNA amplification kit for the Affymetrix system. While we are no longer part of Ambion, “The RNA Company®”, we work on the same campus and avail ourselves of their expertise as needed. We also enjoy strong working relationships with all our platform providers to ensure optimum system performance at all times and fast troubleshooting when required. Asuragen’s Biologics Research group consists of former Ambion R&D scientists with years of experience developing, testing, and utilizing a variety of RNA isolation, amplification, and labeling technologies. In summary, we are an industry leader in RNA-related services and offer the most in-depth knowledge of and experience in service offerings including nucleic acid isolation, mRNA gene expression profiling, miRNA profiling, pathway analysis, and bioinformatics.

A Brief history of the Asuragen

Ambion’s CEO/CSO, Matt Winkler, Ph.D. founded Asuragen, in March of 2006 as a privately held, Delaware corporation. The company is a spin-off from the highly successful research product company Ambion, Inc. (also founded by Dr. Winkler), which was sold to Applied Biosystems in March 2006 for $273 million. Asuragen consists of Ambion’s Diagnostics and Services divisions, and a newly formed Biologics Research group assembled to transform cutting edge research into clinical products. Ambion boasted a history of successful, profitable growth since its founding in 1989, with annual revenue growth nearly 30% for each of the previous five years. Asuragen’s management team consists of former Ambion managers who are committed to the same responsible corporate governance as practiced at Ambion. Asuragen was formed by the acquisition of select assets from Applied Biosystems. At the same time Applied Biosystems, Inc., purchased all outstanding shares of Ambion, Inc. These transactions occurred on March 2, 2006. No Asuragen employees were employed by Applied Biosystems prior to this transaction, or are they currently employed by Applied Biosystems. Applied Biosystems and Asuragen have no material ownership interest in each other and no form of operational control of the other party.