PacBio has announced their anticipated desktop HiFi sequencer, the Vega sequencing platform, something they’ve been talking about since early 2023. The platform, which is slated to ship in Q1 2025, is part of their strategy to broaden their sequencing portfolio (with a high throughput HiFi sequencer and high throughput “Onso-type” short read sequencer also in...
PacBio announced their new SPRQ long read sequencing chemistry ahead of ASHG. While it improves a couple of things, the headline is that it brings down the cost of a long read HiFi human genome to $500 (20X coverage). It manages this by squeezing out more output from each SMRT cell. That, plus some improved...
It’s an exciting time in the sequencing industry. After years of dominance, Illumina started facing competition on all fronts in 2022. Element Biosciences and Singular Genomics launched their desktop sequencers. The US market opened up for MGI (via the Complete Genomics brand that never quite went away). And Ultima Genomics announced the early access program...
Since 2022 saw an explosion of new competition in the sequencing market, I thought this would be a good time to review the market share breakdown for the various players. This should serve as a good reference point going forward to see what kind of impact all the new players will make. Rather than relying...
With the JP Morgan update season about to get in full swing, I thought it might be a good time to review the sequencing field and where we stand at the beginning of 2023. The big news was, of course, that after years of having a virtual monopoly, Illumina faces a bevy of new competitors....
The sequencing market continued its “Big Announcement Season” at ASHG and this time it’s PacBio’s turn. Not to be outdone by Illumina’s NovaSeq X announcement, they introduced TWO major sequencing platforms - one for long reads and one for short reads. Long Reads Their new long read platform announcement came with a good level of...
Back when Illumina first announced they were going to acquire GRAIL, the general feeling in the M&A field was that this wouldn’t trigger any antitrust issues. I was asked if I could think of any difficulties. I didn’t claim back then that I was an antitrust expert (and still don’t), but I did wonder if...
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...
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...
I'm running a quick poll to gauge the sequencing community's opinion about Illumina's proposed acquisition of PacBio. Just two simple questions. For the record, my answers are "yes" and "yes" (but I'm less confident about the second question). Check out my previous post to see my reasoning.