As the genomics community inches closer to realizing the $1,000 genome, Genia Technologies has landed $5.3 million, the largest NIH grant to date under a program to advance genome sequencing technology.
Genia will work with its collaborators at Columbia University and Harvard Medical School to further develop the biotech's nanopore-based DNA sequencing platform, dubbed NanoTag, which is based on the biological nanopore, a protein pore embedded in a lipid bilayer membrane. Nanopore sequencing is a method for determining the order in which nucleotides occur on a strand of DNA.
Stefan Roever, CEO of Genia, said his goal is to take his technology from the research lab and put it into the hands of patients, with the aim of sequencing a whole range of diseases.
"Since most medical conditions have a genetic component, having a way to cost effectively and rapidly analyze DNA will allow treatments to become more personalized and thus more effective," Roever told FierceBiotechResearch in an interview.
The grant is part of an initiative under NIH's National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI). So far, the NHGRI initiative, Revolutionary Genome Sequencing Technologies -- The $1,000 Genome, has doled out about $17 million under its Advanced DNA Sequencing Technology program to 8 research teams developing technology aimed at making DNA sequencing cheaper. Most of the projects--5 of 8--focus on methods and technology related to nanopore-based sequencing.
"The reason why they want to get to that price point is because at that point, sequencing becomes a feasible diagnostics tool," Roever said.
But Genia wants to eventually provide sequencing for even less than that--much less. Roever said he hopes to drive the price down to just $100 and lessen the time it takes do it from days to mere hours.
- here's the press release