Next-Gen Sequencing Update: Sequencing for Thousands, Suing for Millions
It is shaping up to be an eventful fourth quarter for genomic sequencing companies. Investors welcomed sequencing newcomer Pacific Biosciences (PacBio) to the public stage with a strong initial public offering (IPO). According to The Wall Street Journal, the company managed “the first U.S. life-sciences [IPO] this year to price well and trade higher” (although the stock has since traded down somewhat). Up next: another next-gen sequencing IPO with Complete Genomics (CGI) expected to follow PacBio into the public market as early as tomorrow.1
The past few weeks have also seen strong third quarter earnings reports from market leaders Illumina (earnings recap) and Life Technologies (earnings recap), with both companies touting double-digit growth in their next-generation sequencing businesses. Illumina and Life Technologies (Life) are also hard at work on their next generation of products which are intended to compete more directly with the offerings from PacBio and CGI (Oxford Nanopore for Illumina, Ion Torrent and Starlight for Life). Meanwhile, China’s own sequencing entrant, BGI, continues to buy up sequencers (first from Illumina, more recently from Life), and what will soon become the world’s largest provider of genomic sequencing has its own ambitious plans.
Life Technologies Fires Latest Sequencing Salvo
Another week, another drop in the cost of whole-genome sequencing. The latest announcement comes from Life Technologies, which yesterday announced the launch of its SOLiD 4 sequencing system. The details of the announcement are well-covered by GenomeWeb and Matthew Herper of Forbes.com.
In brief, the SOLiD 4 generates 100 gigabases of data per run at a cost of $6,000 per genome, a cost that appears to account solely for the consumables and does not include the cost of the machine or of interpreting all of that sequence data. According to GenomeWeb, Life is also promising an upgrade to its system – SOLiD 4hq – in the second half of 2010 which it expects to triple the data output at half of the cost: 300 megabases per run, $3,000 per sequence.
As for the impact of Life’s SOLiD 4 announcement, Matthew Herper hits the nail on the head:
But although the news is good for Life and will keep it in the game as the price of decoding the genetic code continues to drop, the specs of this new machine don’t seem good enough to upset Illumina’s place as the first choice of geneticists. “It’s a solid improvement, but I don’t think this changes the game,” says Isaac Ro, an analyst at Leerink Swan who follows both companies.
Make Room for Big Blue: IBM the Latest (and Largest) Entrant in the Race for the $1,000 Genome
The quest for the $1,000 genome—viewed by many as the point at which whole-genome sequencing will become cost-effective and widely available—is a fierce competition populated by a cast of start-ups and specialized genomics companies.
The most well-known entrants in the next-generation sequencing market are companies such as Oxford Nanopore, Pacific Biosciences and Complete Genomics; names that are hardly familiar to the average patient or consumer. And the wilder the sequencing claims—e.g., a full genome “for less than $100 in under an hour“—the more obscure, at least for the moment, the company: Halcyon Molecular, BioNanomatrix and NABsys among others.
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