How To Respond To Roche

Any sequencing data coming from Roche on the 20th February could be an extinction level event for the DNA sequencing industry.

But like a mass extinction, this will take time to play out.

In the mean time everyone will make excuses (these are all things I’ve heard already):

• The quality is a lower than Illumina (e.g. Q20 versus Q30). So it won’t be competitive. Or the quality is Q10 so it’s trash…

• Data processing issues will be too high and the box will cost $1M.

• We don’t know the pricing, and Roche always charge too much for things.

• The reads are short so it’s a non-issue for long read platforms.

None of this matters. And if existing sequencing companies don’t shift strategy, they’ll likely be extinct too!

Why Doesn’t It Matter?

This isn’t really about Roche. The Roche announcement will quite possibly show that it’s possible to get a high density nanopore array up and running with a low cost-of-goods.

This means we’re going to get low cost, high throughput nanopore sequencing platforms. Quality may be lower, but they can continue to iterate over this… and you can figure out ways to trade throughput for quality. This makes you competitive anyway if throughput is sufficiently high… and based on their statements the Roche throughput appears to be crazy high (15B reads in 4 hours, 500M bases/second).

That throughput→quality tradeoff probably is only capped by polymerase accuracy. Which puts an upper limit on quality at ~Q40. Similar to all current players.

The platform is also likely compatible with Oxford Nanopore style strand sequencing. So, you can take Oxfords current throughput and scale it up by a factor of 30 in terms of per-run “throughput”, or 600 in terms of bases/second.

Will Roche execute well on this? That’s less clear. But at some point, someone will even if we have to wait for the IP to expire.

When they do, Illumina-style sequencing will have a higher cost-of-goods, longer runs times, and lower throughput. It simply won’t be competitive for the majority of applications.

What Should You Do If You’re A Sequencing Company?

How should current players (Ultima/Element, PacBio, Oxford and Illumina) respond to this? Let’s try and game it out!

Ultima/Element

SELL YOUR COMPANY NOW!