Invitae and PacBio CEOs Share Details of Clinical Sequencing Partnership
Submitted by Theral Timpson on Tue, 12/07/2021 - 00:40In a joint interview, Sean George, CEO of diagnostics firm, Invitae, and Christian Henry, CEO of sequencing tools company, Pacific Biosciences, say that “it was clear in the first five minutes of a phone call that they shared a vision for doing something big together.”
What comes through the interview is that this partnership is built on a big vision: speeding up the adoption of whole genome sequencing into clinical medicine as the preferred method for genetic testing.
A press release at the beginning of the year announced their multi-year collaboration including the development of a production-scale sequencing platform to process clinical whole genomes at scale. In the release, Sean George said “the collaboration is aimed at developing the technology to make it affordable and accessible to all patients who can benefit from in-depth, full genome information.”
What we get today is an early preview of the new platform from Christian Henry and an exploration into Invitae’s view on clinical whole genome sequencing. Is the market there yet? Will it change Invitae’s business model? Where will long read sequencing be most valuable in diagnostics?
Mid-year, PacBio announced the acquisition of Omniome, a short read sequencing technology. How does that play into the deal?
Catch it all here today as we explore the future of genomic medicine.