Roche Nanopore: First Thoughts (pt2)

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See part 1

Summary

Again very impressive. Similar to the expectations of the rumor mill previously posted. The major difference being that they have developed a duplex approach which pushes from “Q20+” to ~Q39.

Early access “2025” (actually they already did it in 2024 by my definition), launching 2026.

Obviously possible they can still screw up execution. We don’t know pricing, we don’t know too much about sample prep (it seems fine). But there’s nothing which suggests to me that COGS should be crazy high.

They currently generate relatively short reads. Competitive with all of Illumina, Element, Ion Torrent, Onso, Ultima, MGI. Very difficult for me to see how these platforms compete.

Oxford/PacBio clearly have long reads so should be fine in long read applications. But if they were looking to get close to competing with Illumina on price as well as providing long reads, this could also make their life harder… (and I think they were trying to do this)