The Rise Of Chinese Sequencing Companies
Last week someone was asking about MGI sequencers. This got me thinking about how broad the Chinese sequencing ecosystem has become. Arguably China can now lay claim to the most “complete” portfolio of Next-gen DNA sequencing companies with Illumina-style SBS, Single Molecule SBS, and nanopore sequencing companies all of which have published data and/or released products.
This is shockingly impressive. Particularly for someone living in Japan which has <check notes> zero NGS companies.
So I thought it would be fun to review the Chinese sequencing ecosystem. First we’ve got three companies that have real actual instruments!
MGI
MGI now have a pretty complete range of Illumina-like sequencers from tiny iSeq’s though to Ultra-high throughput NovaSeq class instruments. From what I’ve seen data quality looks fine. I personally wouldn’t hesitate in moving most applications over to MGI sequencers based on data quality alone.
The limited feedback I received suggested that lab work is a little harder, but not too arduous. Long term maintenance maybe another story (but I’m interested in hearing from users!).
GeneMind
GeneMind seem to have multiple sequencers in development. The GenoLab M is I assume is another Illumina-style SBS sequencer. Their overseas director commented on LinkedIn that GeneMind have a number of instruments installed in mainland China and “Q30 can reach 95% sometimes, 90% in average”.
The GenoLab M produces 500M or 1000M reads, putting it in NextSeq 1000/2000 territory. So it seems that China will have at least two domestic options in this instrument class.
But GeneMind also inherited Direct Genomics sequencing platform after, you know, the CEO went to jail… This is a Helios-style single molecule sequencer. But they’ve also added 2-color sequencing technology. Hopefully MGI won’t sue them.
Qitan Technologies
Then there’s Qitan, an Oxford Nanopore clone. Qitan have several publications from collaborators within China. They’ve also been posting seemingly complete user manuals showing the flow cells and operating instructions on their website.
This all suggests that the Qitan platform is in fact real with real users. While performance seems pretty unimpressive, it’s reasonably shocking that this is one of only two nanopore sequencing platforms on the market!
Beyond this China has a number of sequencing startups these include Cygnus, Sequlite, AxBio, Genvida, and RH Genetech. I’m going to summarize what is publicly know about these companies here.
Cygnus
I’ve not looked at Cygnus in years, but as of March 2023 they still seem to be working on their “Fluorgenic ECC” approach. I wrote about this back in 2018 and it’s a pretty fun idea. How competitive this is as platforms have moved to Q30 and beyond is less clear…
But it’s nice to see they’re still going!
Sequlite
According to a press release Sequlite “has independently researched and developed… core reagent raw materials production (such as high-fidelity DNA polymerase and high-purity nucleotide analogs), core optical imaging system…”
Which sounds like a SBS (maybe Illumina-style) sequencing approach of some sort. But not much else appears to be public.
AxBio
AxBio is a nanopore sequencing startup. Last time I looked at AxBio the approach looked very similar to Genia’s but potentially with a solid state nanopore and impedance sensing. There wasn’t much by way of experimental support in the patents, but it could be worth checking again! I’m not holding my breath for a product here though…
Genvida
Genvida is yet another solid state nanopore startup, this time based in Hong Kong. Here they’re using tunneling currents for sequencing. They’re obviously not the first company to attempt this… The company and approach looks very early stage and is quite ambitious! Will be interesting to see how this pans out.
RH Genetech
RH Genetech have a couple of different technologies, but the sequencing approach looked somewhat like NorthShore’s tunable nanopore idea.
So there we have it. Eight Chinese DNA sequencing startups! If I’ve missed any please get in touch! After the break I’m going to very briefly discuss the implications of this ecosystem for the wider DNA sequencing market.