In June 2007, NimbleGen Systems Inc was acquired by Swiss firm Roche in all an all -cash deal after the firm had unsuccessfully attempted an IPO a few months earlier. The driving factor for that transaction was reported as enabling Roche to gain entry into high-growth research microarrray market and to strengthen the large firm's presence in genomics research market. Now doing business as Roche NimbleGen still in Madison, WI, the firm is focused on research activities and manufacturing target enrichment probe pools for DNA sequencing. Capitalizing on the efficiencies inherent with parallel enrichment, researchers can now design economical, high throughput, and time-saving next-generation sequencing experiments. Next-generation sequencing combined with Sequence Capture probe pools offers researchers a clearer understanding of genomic structure and function in order to understand the impact of genes on biological processes. NimbleGen had been a genomics company developing a new method of making DNA chips that could be manufactured at a much lower cost, making them available to more scientists. By shortening the time it took to produce arrays from months to hours, Users were enabled to create their own high density, custom DNA arrays in their laboratories greatly accelerating the rate of scientific research and discovery.
