One of the hottest trends in NGS applications is that of spatial genomics - measuring nucleic acids and proteins while maintaining the XY (and sometimes Z) coordinates within the tissue sample. This is a very dynamic market with a variety of approaches with a lot of variability in terms of resolution, sampling method (explained below),...
Currently one of the most popular topics for my consultation calls is about the liquid biopsy market. The companies listed below are either offering or developing non-invasive (no solid tissue biopsies) diagnostic and screening methods. While “liquid biopsy” usually means “high complexity NGS cancer test from a blood sample” to most people, there are actually...
Sequencing Platform Companies Although Illumina is dominating next gen sequencing, there are several other sequencing platform companies on the market and several more with platforms in development (a trend that is likely to accelerate over the next few years). There is also a growing list of “former sequencing companies” in the NGS Necropolis. These lists...
GenapSys is the last company on my list presenting at JPMorgan Health this year, so they’re next on the list for updates. The rest (Oxford Nanopore, BGI, Roche/Genia/Stratos, Omniome, etc) can wait a bit, but I clearly need a deadline to get any writing done! 2020 Prediction Here's what I said: “I predict that the...
2020 started pretty rough for PacBio with the Illumina acquisition being called off (albeit with a nice $98 cushion). Then the pandemic hit, forcing them to shut down for a while. Finally, mid-summer the CEO and CFO announced their retirements. My guess is they were all in on the merger and didn’t want to be...
I like to procrastinate to the very last second, so here’s the initial entry of a review of my 2020 predictions and what I see for 2021. I’ll start off with Illumina because they’ll be presenting today at JPMorgan Health. I'll try to get to the others as quickly as I can. As far as...
San Diego startups had a good quarter raising money, pulling in a near record amount of $1.26B (as reported in the San Diego Union Tribune). San Diego County startups pulled in $1.26 billion in the second quarter, the region’s largest single quarter of venture funding since at least 2014, according to the National Venture...
Here’s my take on what we might see in 2020 for the sequencing platform market. This isn’t specifically about JPM, but I wanted to get this out ahead of the conference since it’s obviously one of the main venues for “big announcements”. Illumina 1) Merger/long reads I was all prepared to...
The Launch Factory announced their first startup venture. Unlike a typical accelerator, the Launch Factory is sort of a “reverse” accelerator in that they come up with the startup idea and then search for entrepreneurs to execute the vision. It’s not a great model for most entrepreneurs, but it could be attractive for some. I...
Procopio has a nice article warning startup founders and investors about changes that are coming to SAFEs, the popular convertible investment device developed by Y-Combinator. While the standard terms of convertible notes have remained fairly constant over the years, Y-Combinator has recently made significant changes to their standard form of SAFE, recasting it as a...