Published: 21 November /Bioquick News/
Sister companies Gene by Gene, a Houston, Texas-based 20-year leader in genetic testing and analysis, and Australia-based myDNA, a long-standing pharmacogenomics (PGx) firm, have formed recent partnerships that signal accelerating progress in bringing precision medicine to the patient’s bedside. This progress has been made possible by recent technology advances that have drastically dropped the price of DNA sequencing from hundreds of thousands of dollars per human genome just 5 years ago, to as little as $250 per human genome today. In addition, the speed of sequencing has been increased and turnaround time reduced to make whole genome sequencing and its much greater volume of information ever more available for a much larger number of individuals. Up until now, most sequencing involved arrays that could only sequence ~700,000 base pairs at a time. Now whole genome sequencing enables economic analysis of virtually the entire genome (~3 billion base pairs) at a time.
BioQuick News recently conducted a Zoom interview of Lior Rauchberger, MD, CEO of both Gene by Gene and myDNA, who was a clinical physician in Melbourne for five years before turning full time to his love of technology and its potential to advance precision medicine by founding the Melbourne-based PGx company myDNA. Dr. Rauchberger anticipates that with the current breakthroughs and others on the way, it may be possible for everyone in the world to have a copy of their entire genome sequence from birth as part of their personal health record and this in turn will fuel the widespread adoption of precision medicine to advance human health span. He thinks this universal genome sequencing may be possible by 2035, given the ever-quickening pace of progress.
A flurry of recent collaborations involving Gene by Gene, myDNA, and various gene analysis companies and institutions are signals of the vast improvements and cost-reductions in DNA sequencing making whole genome sequencing economically feasible. Gene by Gene now boasts ~90 B-to-B collaborations and anticipates even more in the near future.
