Company will focus on sequencing a single person’s genome for less than $1,000.
Providence, RI-based NABsys acquired GeneSpectrum in an all-stock transaction. The combined company, NABsys, will pursue its Hybridization-Assisted Nanopore Sequencing (HANS) platform for sequencing human genomic DNA.
“The data and expertise that GeneSpectrum has accumulated in the areas of probe design and DNA hybridization will be invaluable to the sequencing platform that NABsys is pursuing,” explains Barrett Bready, M.D., chief executive of NABsys.
According to the NIH, it currently costs on the order of $10 million to sequence a single person’s genome. NABsys aims to reduce this cost by over four orders of magnitude to less than $1,000 per genome. At this price, DNA sequencing would be transformed from a specialized research tool into a clinical diagnostic, thereby enabling personalized medicine, continues Dr. Bready.
“The combination of the NABsys and GeneSpectrum technologies will enable the combined DNA sequencing platform to sequence DNA orders of magnitude less expensively and with better information content than any technology currently available,” adds John S. Oliver, co-founder of GeneSpectrum and newly appointed vp of R&D at NABsys
