The Business of Genomic Data

Chapter 1. The Business of Genomic Data

Genomic sequencing has come a long way since the international Human Genome Project consortium’s first full sequence, which took nearly 20 years and cost about $2.7 billion. Some early pioneers tried to develop new businesses around genomic data—Human Genome Sciences Inc. even named itself after the technology—but it hasn’t been until very recently that technological advances have created an opportunity to establish companies with viable business models using genomic data at their forefront.

The price to sequence a genome plummeted to $1,000 last year and might approach $500 this year, which has allowed for a massive increase in the number of genomes sequenced. While the added data makes it easier to identify variations, lower cost of data storage and analysis has been key to identifying which of those variations are important. This report will highlight those big-data issues and how companies are using these swiftly increasing amounts of data to improve diagnostics and treatment.

Broadly speaking, companies can be sorted into two classes: those that create the sequence—either by selling DNA sequencers or by using those sequencers to create the sequence—and companies that use the genomic data to create new products: drugs, biomarkers to facilitate precision medicine, or genomic tests to determine which drugs will work best.

Creating Genomic Data

The first sequencing technology, Sanger sequencing, has given way to next-generation sequencing ...