11 Jan JPM18: Edico Genome, Illumina, Invitae, Regeneron, Thermo Fisher Scientific,… and the list goes on
It’s been an announcement-packed JPMorgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco this week!
A number of testing companies had exciting business announcements including Genomic Health (which reached the expected profitability in 2017), Foundation Medicine(which may boast a higher than expected fourth quarter revenue), Invitae (which exceeded its annual projected testing volume), Myriad Genetics (which saw a volume gain for its hereditary cancer testing), Guardant Health (which plans to submit its Guardant360IVD liquid biopsy assay for FDA approval in 2018), 10x Genomics (which recognized a healthy $71M revenue in 2017), Twist Bioscience (which shipped more than 150K genes to its customers in 2017), and Edico Genome (which was selected by Genomics England to use the DRAGEN pipeline to re-analyze 5000 whole genomes).
Then, of course, there were the Illumina and Thermo Fisher Scientific announcements around the launch of new sequencing instruments. Illumina launched its $20,000 desktop iSeq 100 sequencer that allows researchers to study viruses, bacteria, and other microbes. Thermo Fisher launched the semiconductor sequencing technology-based Ion GeneStudio S5 Prime and the Ion GeneStudio S5 Plus for sequencing in oncology, noninvasive prenatal testing, and applied markets. Last but not least, the new Illumina library prep partnership with Thermo Fisher enables Illumina to sell Ion AmpliSeq technology to researchers who conduct studies on Illumina’s NGS platform.
In one of the largest efforts to create human genetic data to identify “many more” actionable genes, a consortium of pharmaceutical companies led by Regeneron will sequence the genes of 500,000 volunteers from the United Kingdom, the data from which will be broadly accessible by 2020. Specifically, Regeneron will handle all the sequencing and AbbVie, Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, AstraZeneca, Biogen, and Pfizer will each contribute $10 million to create this data that will largely focus on exomes.
These exciting New Year developments are a great lead in to our upcoming 13th Personalized Medicine World Conference taking place in 10 days, January 22-24, in Silicon Valley.
The upcoming PMWC agenda focuses on the relevance and developments of next-generation sequencing, new applications in clinical diagnostics, and feature a number of sessions dedicated to artificial intelligence, gene therapy, immunotherapy, and more. The speaker lineup includes those from commercial companies that are active in the sequence systems space with dedicated sessions covering:
- “Accelerating Clinical Next-Generation Sequencing: Navigating the Path to Reimbursement” with presenters from Illumina, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Edico Genome, and Foundation Medicine
- “Large Scale Sequencing and Genetics Initiatives” with contributors from Regeneron, Kaiser Permanente, Harvard Medical School, and Geisinger
- “Genetics to Therapeutics” with presenters from Regneron, 23andMe, and deCODE.
In addition, conference attendees will hear from a broad representation of organizations that are building genetic testing and diagnostic solutions (Guardant Health, Foundation Medicine, Invitae, Inflammatix, iNDx Technology, Quest Diagnostics, CardioDx, UCSF, Broad Institute, Veracyte, Viviphi Ltd, and many more).
Hope to see you all at the upcoming conference where you can witness how some of these recent announcements translate into action in the clinical sector and precision medicine in particular.
