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Cost Drops For Complete Genetic Blueprint

Posted on: Monday, 6 October 2008, 15:15 CDT

A start-up company called Complete Genomics announced on Monday it is offering people a complete genetic blueprint for around $5,000.

The company says it will start charging customers next year for determining the sequence of the genetic code that makes up the DNA in one set of human chromosomes.

The announcement is but another step toward the long-sought goal of the “$1,000 genome.” At that price point it might become commonplace for people to obtain their entire DNA sequences, giving them information on what diseases they might be predisposed to or what drugs would work best for them.

George M. Church, a professor of genetics at Harvard who is an adviser to Complete Genomics and to several other sequencing companies, said it’s a “shockingly low price.”

But Dr. Church said the cost of DNA sequencing has dropped by a factor of 10 every year for the last four years, a faster rate of decline than even for computers.

DNA is made up of a string of chemical units, usually represented by the letters A, C, G and T. The order in which those letters appear governs a person’s inherited traits. Sequencing involves determining that order. The human genome — the complete set of DNA — consists of about six billion letters, counting both members of each pair of chromosomes.

The federally financed Human Genome Project in 2003 was the first human genome sequence, estimated to have cost a few hundred million dollars. Last year, the genome sequence of James D. Watson, a discoverer of the structure of DNA, was completed at a cost of about $1 million.

Chad Nusbaum, co-director of the genome sequencing and analysis program at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Mass, said today, the cost is about $100,000.

Complete Genomics will not begin its service until the second quarter of next year. By then, the cost of competing technologies will no doubt have fallen further. Just last week, Applied Biosystems, a leading manufacturer, said it expected that its newest machine would allow a human genome to be sequenced for $10,000, although that includes only the cost of consumable materials, not labor or the machinery.

Knome, a company that offers to provide consumers with their DNA sequence, charges a retail price of $350,000 that includes not just the sequencing costs but also the analysis of the data and the customer service.

Complete Genomics will not offer a service to consumers. But it will provide sequencing for consumer-oriented companies like Knome.

Jorge C. Conde, the chief executive of Knome, said the company is already exploring farming out its sequencing to Complete Genomics. “We anticipate we’d be able to significantly drop our price,” he said.

But most of Complete Genomics’ customers are expected to be pharmaceutical companies or research laboratories that are doing studies aimed at finding genes linked to diseases. Such studies might look at the DNA of 1,000 people with a disease and 1,000 people without the disease.

Currently, such studies look at only particular locations in the DNA because it is too expensive to determine the entire DNA sequence. But presumably, an entire sequence would provide more complete information.

Hoping to find genetic patterns that could predict which patients will have the best response to a drug, pharmaceutical companies are also collecting DNA from participants in many clinical trials.

Started in 2006 in Mountain View, Calif., Complete Genomics’ sequencing technology has been under development by its chief science officer, Radoje Drmanac, since the 1990s — first at a federal laboratory and then at Hyseq, a genomics company that subsequently shifted to drug development and changed its name to Nuvelo.

So far, the company has raised $46 million in venture capital, including a small investment from Genentech, the biotechnology pioneer.

Complete Genomics’s sequencer does not work that much differently from rival machines. But company executives say that miniaturization allows their sequencer to use only tiny amounts of enzymes and other materials. Outsiders have not yet examined the accuracy of the company’s sequences.

Complete Genomics will offer sequencing as a service, rather than selling machines, as most sequencing companies do. That also might help keep prices low because its machines do not have to look as pretty or be as foolproof as they would if they were being sold.

“We’re not losing money at $5,000,” said Clifford Reid, the chief executive of Complete Genomics.

The company’s first project will be for the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, whose president, Leroy Hood, is an adviser to Complete Genomics.

Complete Genomics hopes to perform 1,000 human genome sequences next year and 20,000 in 2010, with a goal of completing a million by 2013, Reid said. That assumes the company can raise the money and find partners to build 10 sequencing centers at a cost of $50 million each. It also assumes there will be enough demand.

The number of human genomes sequenced to date by all parties combined is, at most, in the double digits. Knome, for instance, says it is on track to have 20 customers by the end of this year.

Of course, Volume could further drive down prices. “If we’ve got a million genomes sequenced by 2013,” Reid said, “it’s going to be very hard for anyone to compete with us.”

Image Courtesy National Institutes of Health

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On the Net:

• Complete Genomics
• Human Genome Project
• Applied Biosystems
• Knome

Source: redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports

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