Find here a listing of the latest industry news in genomics, genetics, precision medicine, and beyond. We will update and add to this page on a regular basis. This page is not a compilation of all relevant information but rather contains some key highlights that we consider to be of importance to share with the community.
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News for the month of January 2022
JPMorgan Healthcare Conference Highlights
- Funding
- Significant Investment Accelerates Freenome’s Multiomics Platform for the Early Detection of Cancer Freenome Roche has made an investment of $290 million, bringing Freenome’s total funding to more than $1.1 billion since the company was founded in 2014. This announcement follows Freenome’s recent Series D financing of $300 million in December.
- Mergers & Acquisitions
- mRNA Technology
- CAR-T Cell Therapy
- Century Therapeutics and Bristol Myers Squibb Enter into a Strategic Collaboration to Develop iPSC-derived Allogeneic Cell Therapies
- COVID-19 Vaccine Market
- Pfizer sales of COVID-19 vaccine climb, with tens of billions more expected next year Pfizer expects sales of its coronavirus vaccine will reach approximately $36 billion this year, an increase of $2.5 billion from what it predicted in July and more than twice what it forecast in February as countries continue to ink supply deals for more doses.
- Moderna improves forecast for 2022 sales from COVID-19 vaccine Moderna expected to record sales of about $18.5 billion in 2022 from contracts for its COVID-19 vaccine, and about $3.5 billion from potential additional purchases including booster candidates updated for variants.
- Sequencing Platforms / Insight Generation
- X Marks the $100 Genome: Illumina Presents New Chemistry, Strong Results Illumina shares new sequencing-by-synthesis chemistry (codenamed “Chemistry X) and gears up for its long-read Infinity launch later this year, plus numerous collaborations.
- Nashville Biosciences and Illumina Announce Agreement to Establish Preeminent Clinico-Genomic Resource for Life Sciences Research & Development Nashville Biosciences and Illumina will seek to establish an alliance with multiple pharmaceutical industry partners to perform whole genome sequencing on approximately 250,000 de-identified DNA samples collected under an Institutional Review Board (IRB)-approved process over the past 15 years.
- Singular Genomics partners with several companies to enable existing NGS Products: NEBiolabs, Lexogen, Dovetail Genomics, Watchmaker Genomics, and Twist Bioscience.
- Scientists describe new approach in NEJM, using Oxford Nanopore DNA sequencing technology to improve prognosis in critically ill patients, in less than 8 hours Oxford Nanopore worked with a team led by Stanford University School of Medicine to develop a rapid, whole genome sequencing approach
- Miscellaneous
- Verily’s Lee details ‘strong’ revenue growth as company eyes employer market in 2022 There has been speculation that Verily is looking to untangle itself from Google and move outside its parent company, Alphabet, which could signal an initial public offering.
- Twist Bioscience’s Comprehensive DNA Synthesis Capabilities Expanded as Industry-Leading Enzymatic Synthesis Process Partners with PacBio, Singular Genomics Enabling New Sequencing Platforms.
- Invitae Reports Preliminary 2021 Revenue of More Than $458 Million and Billable Volume of More Than 1.16 Million
- 64 percent growth year-over-year in revenues
- 76 percent growth year-over-year in billable volumes
- Ended the year with more than 17,500 active healthcare provider accounts
- Active pharma and commercial partnerships expand by 68 percent
- SOPHiA GENETICS Reports Strong Traction in the Launch Phase of its DEEP-Lung-IV Multimodal Clinical Study
SARS-CoV-2 / COVID-19
- The origin of SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern
- Are Some Vaccine Side Effects Just in Our Heads? Talking “nocebo effect”
- Understanding Evolution of COVID-19 Driven Mortality Rate
- Early non-neutralizing, afucosylated antibody responses are associated with COVID-19 severity
- Pfizer Shares In Vitro Efficacy of Novel COVID-19 Oral Treatment Against Omicron Variant
- Biden plans giveaway of 400M masks as Omicron surges
- Covid News: U.S. Website for Free At-Home Tests Launches, With a Few Glitches
- Stanford medical specialists tackle long-COVID and its public implications
- Breakthrough infections with SARS-CoV-2 omicron despite mRNA vaccine booster dose
- Clinical outcomes among patients infected with Omicron (B.1.1.529) SARS-CoV-2 variant in southern California
Funding / IPO
- VeriSIM Life closes $15m series A round to advance AI-enabled drug research
- Significant Investment Accelerates Freenome’s Multiomics Platform for the Early Detection of Cancer Freenome Roche has made an investment of $290 million, bringing Freenome’s total funding to more than $1.1 billion since the company was founded in 2014. This announcement follows Freenome’s recent Series D financing of $300 million in December.
Mergers & Acquisitions
- Japan’s Takeda buys Adaptate Biotherapeutics to strengthen immuno-oncology portfolio
- Ginkgo Bioworks Announces Acquisition of Massachusetts COVID-19 Testing Provider Project Beacon COVID-19 LLC
- Sema4 to Acquire GeneDx, Strengthening its Market-Leading AI-Driven Genomic and Clinical Data Platform
Partnerships / Collaborations
- Parse Biosciences Announces Partnership With Research Instruments Group to Offer RNA-Seq Kits in Singapore and Southeast Asia Region
- Oncocyte Announces Development and Co-Marketing Agreement with Thermo Fisher Scientific to Expand Access to Precision Oncology
Precision Medicine
- How Regeneron Bypasses Bottlenecks to Iterate at the Scale and Speed of Science A DNAnexus white paper
- 50,000th U K Biobank participant scanned in world’s most ambitious imaging study
- Natera Announces Expansion Into Early Cancer Detection and Screening
Sequencing Platforms
- Illumina delivered a strong finish to 2021 with preliminary consolidated fourth quarter revenue of approximately $1.190 billion – up 25 per cent year-over-year.
- Illumina says EU probe of $8bn Grail deal could hit biotech investment deSouza attacks regulatory intervention over cancer test company
- PacBio and Google Collaborate to Use Machine Learning to Optimize Long-Read Sequencing Data Analysis
- World Record-Setting DNA Sequencing Technique Helps Clinicians Rapidly Diagnose Critical Care Patients Initiative led by the Stanford University School of Medicine identifies genetic diseases in as little as 7.5 hours using NVIDIA Clara, Google DeepVariant, and Oxford Nanopore Technologies sequencing.
- X Marks the $100 Genome: Illumina Presents New Chemistry, Strong Results
Genomics Data Analysis
Miscellaneous
- Seven technologies to watch in 2022 Nature’s roundup of the innovative tools that are changing science. Includes: long-read sequencing technologies, protein structure predictions via structure-prediction algorithms, precise genome manipulation using genome-editing technologies like CRISPR-Cas9, targeted genetic therapies, CRISPR-based diagnostics, and spatial multi-omics.
- When They Warn of Rare Disorders, These Prenatal Tests Are Usually Wrong Additional articles/posts written in response to the NYT article:
- Medicare Proposes to Sharply Limit Coverage of the Alzheimer’s Drug Aduhelm If finalized it would restrict coverage to patients in randomized clinical trials.
- New AZ Vaxzevria data further support its use as third dose booster
- Biogen vows to fight CMS’ draft coverage decision for Aduhelm before April finalization
- Pfizer lays off hundreds of US sales rep as fewer in-person meetings expected to remain permanent
- A Call For Data Equity: Using Pandemic Data Mishaps To Improve Health Outcomes
- 23andMe Initiates Phase 1 Clinical Trial for First Wholly-Owned Immuno-oncology Antibody for Patients with Solid Tumors
Publications
- Integrated genome and transcriptome analyses reveal the mechanism of genome instability in ataxia with oculomotor apraxia 2
- De novo mutation rates at the single-mutation resolution in a human HBB gene-region associated with adaptation and genetic disease
- Spatial proteogenomics reveals distinct and evolutionarily conserved hepatic macrophage niches
- Ultrarapid Nanopore Genome Sequencing in a Critical Care Setting
