The big news today is that Life Tech, of SOLiD fame intend to acquire Ion Torrent, subject to certain technical milestones being reached. The best blog coverage is at Omics Omics and Genetic Future.
This means Illumina, Life Tech and Roche, our sequencing Big Three have all now got into bed with “next-next-generation” technology platforms. Roche have previously signed up IBM’s nanopore technology and Illumina have entered into a marketing and distribution alliance with Oxford Nanopore.
What does this all mean?
Each platform holder is trying to balance their portfolio and position for the future. Roche are struggling to get much more throughput from the 454 platform and so it makes sense that they focus on the potentially superior nanopore platform. This is some way off, perhaps 5-7 years. Roche’s portfolio has got a big hole the middle right now.
Illumina are dominant but are also looking to the future. Oxford Nanopore looks like a sensible alliance, and I’d predict we’ll see it hit in about 3 years time.
By snapping up Ion Torrent, Life Tech have gone for a quite different technology which looks much more likely to integrate happily into the clinical diagnostics market. As announced, Ion Torrent’s closest competitor is the 454 Jr.
In fact, the Ion Torrent system is rather similar to the 454 sequencing system in many ways (not surprising as Jonathan Rothberg started 454 as well as Ion Torrent). Ion Torrent’s main advantage is price, clocking in at $50-100k for the instrument and $500 a run in consumables. It’s also fast, a promised 1 hour per run (but still a day for sample prep). But this isn’t single molecule and the throughput is low, clocking in at 100Mb. This is a gazelle: fast, agile, but relatively weak.
But Life Tech have also announced another in-house technology called quantum dot single-molecule sequencing (more here), and covered their bases well.
A more practical consideration is that the term “next-generation sequencing” is dead. It’s all getting way too confusing. Despite my expectation that technology should progress linearly and result in steady improvements in each areas, this isn’t the case. Right now you can pick and choose from a menu of options. You can have direct sequencing (single molecule), faster sequencing, faster sample prep, higher throughput, longer reads, cheaper, but you can’t have it all.
Continuing the animal analogy; SOLiD and HiSeq are now looking like elephants (or rhinos, or hippos) – powerful, but slow and cumbersome.
So, where does that leave us:
| Current Platform | Next Platform | ||||
| Roche | 454 | Gazelle (ailing) | IBM Nanopore | Unknown | 5-7 years |
| Life Tech | SOLiD | Elephant | Ion Torrent | Gazelle | Next year |
| Illumina | HiSeq 2000 | Elephant | Oxford Nanopore | Unknown | Unknown – 2-3 years? |
Before you prompt me: where does the PacBio RS sit? Well, in view of its size – perhaps this should be the blue whale. And Helicos, alas is perhaps the dodo.
i am sorry , but the parting shot about helicos is just plain ridiculuous….the RNA research published only 2 weeks ago in Nature represents possibily the most major breakthrough in sequencing in recent memory…..a “dodo”…who are you kidding?..
Ah, well, please take the comment in the spirit it was intended – perhaps a little tongue-in-cheek, but Helicos as a business is looking a little shakey right now (see http://www.google.co.uk/finance?client=ob&q=NASDAQ:HLCS). I agree that Nature paper was very interesting, perhaps that deserves a blog post too.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Daniel MacArthur, Justin H. Johnson, hermmays, Khader Shameer, Khader Shameer and others. Khader Shameer said: RT @BioInfo: Commentary on @LIFECorporation intent on acquiring @iontorrent by @pathogenomenick (http://j.mp/aVXm8J) & @dgmacarthur (http://j.mp/cLDMHk) [...]
True enough, Helicos wasn’t able to find a market for their machines at $1M a pop. They realized quickly enough and smartly changed directions – aiming for the lucrative diagnostics market. Their technology is very interesting and capable of doing what no one else can (yet). At a $50M market cap, don’t be surprised to see them gobbled up soon as well.
They’re not dodos over there. A recent article from NHGRI delves into the “Road to the $1000 Genome” and Helicos is a still a key player.
http://www.genome.gov/27540667
I like to think of the gen 2 systems as giant fighting dinosuars, ‘G per run – grr – arggh’ etc, a volcano of data spewing behind them in a Jurassic landscape – Sequanosaurus Rex. Meanwhile, in the undergrowth, the gen 3 ‘ mammals’ are quietly getting on with evolving and adapting to the imminent climate change…..smaller, faster, agile and more intelligent…
@MellisAK
I certainly don’t wish ill to anyone trying to innovate in this competitive space. Tell you what, if Helicos do turn it around I’ll happily update this blog to rename them the phoenix!
Update to my blog: various sources indicate that the Life Tech quantum dot technology is on the back-burner whilst they concentrate on Ion Torrent (more here).
Knowing Rothberg, Ion Torrent is most likely a cardboard cut-out of a gazelle. I would wait until you see realistic performance specs, pricing and timelines before formatting your table to fit their overzealous marketing materials.
@Dark_Base
Any particular reason to suspect the performance specs aren’t right?
I agree the pricing is now a bit of a worry given that Life won’t want to strangle their own products (like the SOLiD PI)
I see no official or validated performance spec published anywhere, just conjecture from comments made during Rothberg’s weird talk at AGBT. When the early access customers give specs, then I think I can believe them. Until then marketing can give vague performance specs. I agree they must have been promising enough for Life to spend so much money, so maybe the Gazelle is appropriate!
The price point of the purchase would make it hard to sell a cheap sequencer. How many $50K sequencers and consumables would you have to sell to make back the investment and turn a profit? The first $50K sequencer may be the overseas rip-off of the technology where they did not have to incur the developmental costs. All in all this will be a great story to watch!
[...] Great article at the Pathogens: Genes and Genomes blog. [...]
[...] as guilty as anyone about buying into the hype. When I labelled the Ion Torrent an agile gazelle earlier this year, “Dark_Star”, a admonished me for not being skeptical enough. Well, [...]