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Company Develops Four-Minute Gene Map Device

Posted on: Tuesday, 12 February 2008, 12:55 CST

California-based Pacific Biosciences said its new gene-sequencing machine will soon be able to sequence an entire human gene map in four minutes at a cost of just $1,000.  

"It will change health care forever if it works," Hugh Martin, the chief executive officer of the company, said in a Reuters telephone interview on Monday.

"You could be on the operating table and having a biopsy while under anesthesia," he said. Doctors could then compare the sequence in a tumor to the DNA in a patient's healthy cells and develop customized treatment, he added.

The company presented its findings Saturday to a meeting in Florida, and said the new instruments will cost between $400,000 and $600,000, plus kits with chemicals and other components required to operate them.

"The real idea is to be able to sequence people fast enough and cheaply enough so we can turn some really interesting discovery problems in genetics and genetic diseases into software problems," Martin said.

Scientists often don’t know where to begin looking for genes involved in certain diseases, and will benefit greatly from so-called genome-wide association studies, which are in effect a like finding a needle in a haystack using the entire human genome.

For example, "You can sequence 1,000 people who exhibit addictive behavior and 1,000 who don't and see if there are any differences between them," Martin said.

Both private and government organizations have invested in the initiative to find quick, low-cost methods to sequence the human gene map .  

"The tools we have for understanding the relationship between changes in the genome and disease require now that we look at lots of people, that we study a lot of people who have a disease and look at changes in their genome," said Schloss, whose institute gave Pacific Biosciences $6.7 million for its work.

Martin said the company had received an additional $72 million from private investors. Government sponsors of the project are equally enthusiastic.

The funding is out there for companies that want to find faster, lower-cost alternatives to sequence the human gene map. In 2004, the National Institutes of Health initiated a $70 million grant program to foster such work, and the California-based X Prize Foundation is offering $10 million to the first team to sequence 100 human genomes in 10 days.

"In complex diseases like heart disease, there are many different genes that contribute to the disease and each of those genes has a small effect," said Jeff Schloss, head of the sequencing-technologies grant program at the National Human Genome Research Institute, in a Reuters report.

Last month Knome, a Massachusetts-based personal genomics company, said it was providing people their own personal genome sequences at a price of $350,000.

However, Martin sees no reason for individuals to get their gene maps sequenced yet, and said his company will market their instruments to research laboratories.

Competitors of Pacific Biosciences, including Solexa, Applied Biosystems, 454 Life Sciences Corp, and Helicos Biosciences Corp., are also working to develop a faster, cheaper DNA map.

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On the Net:

Pacific Biosciences

Pacific Biosciences Press Release

Source: redOrbit Staff and Wire Reports

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