January signifies that it’s time for the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Convention, held every year in San Francisco. The assembly, which attracts 1000’s of biotech executives, traders, and analysts, usually brings with it large bulletins from genomics and next-generation sequencing (NGS) corporations. It’s a week that each sequencing facility director loves and hates, famous Charlie Johnson, PhD, director of genomics and bioinformatics service at Texas A&M AgriLife Analysis.
This 12 months, nonetheless, is predicted to be a deviation from earlier years. As a result of 2022 introduced a tsunami of NGS information—new corporations and devices flooding the market—few commentators expect the large bulletins of years previous. Reasonably, the NGS group appears prepared to take a seat again and let the chips fall the place they might.
However Full Genomics—a subsidiary of China’s MGI—has yet another piece of wooden to cut. Through the firm’s presentation at JP Morgan, co-founder and CSO Rade Drmanac, PhD, introduced the arrival of Full’s full sequencing platform in the US. The devices, beforehand offered outdoors the US below the MGI brand, will likely be offered for the primary time in the US by means of Full Genomics, positioned in San Jose, CA. Drmanac defined that they determined to promote the devices below Full Genomics as a result of the corporate has nice identify recognition, and an extended historical past within the U.S. market—since 2006. The corporate needs to make the most of, and pay tribute, to these attributes.
Full Genomics launched its novel DNA NanoBalls (DNB) sequencing platform in 2008, and briefly loved the limelight on this planet of next-gen sequencing together with the publication of three human genome sequences in 2009. However the firm struggled after going public and was acquired by BGI for about $117 million in 2013.
This week’s announcement was very completely different from the launches of 2022: no former presidents on stage (Illumina) or rock bands performing (PacBio). However Full Genomics is a really completely different firm. The massive information in 2022 got here from new corporations or new devices. Full is a veteran firm, with a variety of devices, all of which have been battle examined in lots of large markets, together with China, Japan, different Asian nations, Australia, and Europe. Now they’re poised to enter the US.
The devices
On the coronary heart of the devices is Full’s DNBseq expertise, which mixes DNBs—small, densely packed nanoballs of DNA generated by rolling-circle replication—and a patterned array of “sticky spots” to seize the DNBs. One benefit, famous Drmanac, is that just one copy of DNA is made, eliminating clonal errors, not like different platforms.
The devices now obtainable in the US are:
- DNBSEQ-T7—Full Genomics’ flagship instrument. An ultra-high throughput sequencer with 4 impartial move cells (which may be began independently of each other.) With an output of 1–7 terabases (Tb) per day, it could possibly produce greater than 20,000 30X complete genome sequences in lower than one 12 months. This instrument (akin to a NovaSeq) is obtainable now.
- DNBSEQ-T10x4—Full Genomics’ largest and highest throughput next-generation sequencer, obtainable with a robotic arm with a knowledge output of as much as 18 Tb every day (180 genomes per day.) That is obtainable now.
- DNBSEQ-E25—A transportable sequencer with a low throughput of as much as 7.5 gigabases (Gb) every day and a fast turnaround time—20 hours from DNA pattern to FASTQ information. This product will likely be launched within the second quarter of 2023.
- DNBSEQ-G400C—A medium-throughput benchtop sequencer, akin to Illumina’s NextSeq, launched in the US final August.
All the Full platforms produce typical NGS brief learn lengths, or as the corporate calls them, massively parallel sequencing (MPS) reads. Accuracy is claimed to be akin to the corporate’s rivals.
How a lot do the devices value? Full Genomics declined to supply particulars, telling GEN that the promoting costs for his or her devices are “about 30% decrease than comparable rivals’ devices.” The corporate does supply that the sequencing value on the DNBSEQ-T7 is $5 per Gb. Nevertheless, in an intensively aggressive market, worth will likely be on the forefront of consumers’ minds.
“It’s nice to see MGI lastly available on the market in the US, particularly given their broad portfolio that may primarily match Illumina machine for machine,” mentioned genomics guide Shawn Baker, PhD. However Baker agrees that the shortage of worth tags is a vital omission. “Their announcement at J.P. Morgan was somewhat disappointing as there was just one new instrument, the DNBSEQ-E25. And, even worse, they didn’t embrace any pricing data. On this newly aggressive market, worth goes to be one of many high elements when making a buying determination.”
Johnson agrees. “The massive disappointment is lack of pricing each for the sequencers and reagents. With out this and different particulars, I’m left with the query: why purchase this technique over Illumina?”
Strive it before you purchase it
Drmanac is aware of that there will likely be hurdles in getting began in a brand new nation. It takes time to get traction, he mentioned. However Full Genomics is providing a program to let customers strive the machines risk-free with a “strive before you purchase it” plan. They’ve applied a free three-month trial. “We’re assured and we would like prospects to expertise our devices,” defined Drmanac. In the event that they don’t like them, they’ll return them, he mentioned.
Johnson likes this concept. It’s novel, he mentioned, and one thing he needs different new sequencing corporations would undertake. Full Genomics can be the one sequencing firm that he is aware of of that has an end-to-end excessive throughput automation answer, which he thinks is a plus.
Full Genomics presents a long-read expertise referred to as Single Tube Lengthy Fragment Learn (stLFR) expertise. In it, each learn that comes from one molecule has the identical barcode, permitting the reads to be grouped. Drmanac’s staff printed this expertise in a 2019 Genome Analysis paper titled, “Environment friendly and distinctive cobarcoding of second-generation sequencing reads from lengthy DNA molecules enabling cost-effective and correct sequencing, haplotyping, and de novo meeting.” Kits for stLFR may also be obtainable in the US.
That mentioned, the corporate appears to buck the long-read pattern adopted by another NGS corporations. It tells GEN, “Though single molecule/long-read sequencing expertise has overcome the constraints of NGS reads, it’s nonetheless restricted in purposes as a consequence of dearer {hardware} and far decrease sequencing accuracy. Due to this fact, short-read, high-throughput sequencing expertise is the principle driving drive for the popularization of large-scale industrial software of gene sequencing expertise and can keep the standing of mainstream sequencing expertise for the foreseeable future.”
Wholesome competitors
Drmanac is wanting ahead to researchers getting their palms on these devices that “they have been disadvantaged of earlier than.” Drmanac tells GEN, chuckling, that he believes “persons are kind of ready for us.” He likes the ecosystem of truthful and wholesome competitors and offering a option to prospects. Allow them to determine what to purchase!
The purpose isn’t essentially to share an current market, famous Drmanac. The market will develop; he predicts that the world will likely be sequencing 1,000 instances extra DNA within the subsequent 10 years. Reasonably, it’s about enabling new, and completely different, sequencing. Even when a researcher has an current system, they might want to broaden, he mentioned.
Drmanac is shocked by the place the sphere is at the moment. And he ought to know; he has been within the DNA sequencing world longer than most. He left Serbia in 1988 to observe his dream of constructing sequencing environment friendly and reasonably priced. It was then that he proposed MPS for the primary time. And, as the sphere continues to develop, it’s providing a spot for a lot of completely different applied sciences, he mentioned. “We’d like so many alternative applied sciences to crack the code. As a result of it’s a significantly difficult code in our genome.”
