NGS Manufacturers Market - Professor of Computational Genomics, U.S. AMC

A professor of computational genomics at a U.S. AMC runs a lab with a $3M sequencing budget. They utilize short read sequencing, long read sequencing, and spatial technologies across applications ranging from research through clinical testing including cancer diagnostics, microbiome research, functional genomics, synthetic biology, and agrigenomics. They are familiar with all instruments probed on. They currently utilize various instruments from Illumina, ThermoFisher, Oxford Nanopore, and PacBio. They expressed excitement about all new entrants to the market and the competition being generated, and are actively evaluating platforms from Element, MGI, and Ultima. They believe that to differentiate as a short-read vendor, lowering cost and improving accuracy should be prioritized. As a long-read vendor, improving bioinformatics pipelines and lowering input requirements could be differentiating. They view library prep and bioinformatics as key pain points. If prices continue to decrease they will likely increase sample number, sequencing depth, and panel size. The interviewee was able to comment on specific technical pain points about each vendor discussed.

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