PacBio (NASDAQ: PACB), developer of the world’s most advanced sequencing technologies, announced the upcoming availability of SPRQ-Nx chemistry and an accompanying software update for its Vega systems. Together, the updates expand the range of HiFi applications laboratories can run in-house and allow customers to match sequencing performance and run time to specific project needs.

Vega SPRQ-Nx brings the same core chemistry used on the high-throughput Revio system to Vega, increasing output from 60 Gb to 90 Gb of HiFi data per run. PacBio is also lowering the U.S. list price per run from $1,100 to $995. The higher output and lower price per run lowers cost per Gb by approximately 40%, letting laboratories run more samples across whole-genome sequencing, targeted sequencing, and synthetic biology applications.

Alongside the new chemistry, the Vega software update introduces two-hour and four-hour sequencing runs. The update also brings Vega in line with the multiomic analysis capabilities available on Revio with a new 5-hydroxymethylcytosine (5hmC) caller and improved 5mC and 6mA callers. Finally, the update adds user login and audit-tracking capabilities designed to support customers’ 21 CFR Part 11 compliance efforts and strengthen data integrity and workflow traceability.

"Vega SPRQ-Nx expands what labs can do on a benchtop HiFi system,” said Christian Henry, President and CEO of PacBio. “Customers get 50% more HiFi data at a lower price per run, along with faster sequencing options, richer DNA-methylation insights, and controls designed for regulated workflows. These advances and cost reductions make it practical to bring many more high-value HiFi applications in-house or for labs to adopt HiFi sequencing for the first time.”

In the first half of 2026, 19% of Vega runs used libraries with inserts shorter than 2 kb, compared with 3.6% of Revio runs, illustrating Vega’s distinct role in targeted and other short-insert workflows. While Revio customers primarily run whole-genome and full-length RNA sequencing, Vega customers are using the benchtop system across a broad mix of short-insert applications. The new sequencing options allow these short-insert runs to complete within a single laboratory shift, helping keep projects moving.

Vega SPRQ-Nx chemistry lowers DNA input requirements from 2 µg to as low as 500 ng, up to a fourfold reduction that gives laboratories greater flexibility with limited samples and broadens the range of projects they can run in-house. The higher yield also enables laboratories to multiplex up to 96 samples per run using PacBio PureTarget repeat expansion and carrier screening panels, increasing throughput and lowering per-sample sequencing costs.

PacBio plans to make the Vega SPRQ-Nx chemistry products available to ship, and the accompanying Vega software update available to download, by the end of the month.