The J.P. Morgan conference last week was mostly small tidbits of info on the sequencing front, with Element delivering the one big teaser announcement.
It's worth taking a moment to marvel that sequencing is so well represented at JPM - all of the companies selling into the US market save Complete Genomics had talks. The cloud over Complete grew darker with the New Year, as the US Biosecure Act went into effect at 2025's end. This high coverage needn't be so - there's only so many speaking slots and far more companies. For one slightly embarrassing example, take Integra Biosciences, which makes automation gear, the Miro Canvas library prep devices as well as their traditional pipettes, so I had added Integra LifeSciences to my schedule. Which is a maker of surgical instruments with no apparent historical connection - the monikers are purely convergent branding evolution. Shades of Merck USA vs. Merck AG.
Element's big surprise was announcing a high throughput benchtop system under development. This wrecks my thesis that Element was dodging the high throughput scrum to focus on high content drug discovery assays. They show no sign of abandoning that push, but now say they'll have a small system delivering 100 gigabases-ish for $100. Element is now also planning a whole transcriptome assay of some sort. Since they are private, the presentation isn't available but GenomeWeb appears to have reported what few details are available. Element has a full webinar scheduled for just before AGBT - first viewing on Thursday February 20th, then repeats on Friday the 21st (when I'll be enroute to Florida, so that Thursday timeslot is now inviolable on my calendar).
Illumina announced they are building a billion cell single cell expression atlas. This is a popular field these days, with the idea being that all that data can be used to build AI models to predict expression in any sample. I really should lay down some thoughts on this soon, so they can be scorecarded over time.
PacBio gave some numbers on Revio flowcell reuse, showing that the SPRQ-Nx chemistry delivers over 120 gigabases data both on the initial flowcell use and a single reuse. 5-hydroxymethylcytosine calling is also promised with SPRQ-Nx, which will fully launch this year. Vega will gain the SPRQ chemistry in third quarter.
Oxford Nanopore is now promising a chemistry update for PromethION which will deliver two human genomes per flowcell soon, with four in the future. Perhaps the other big surprise on an ONT slide is one mapping all the steps from sample to answer and marking two large zones for partnering opportunities. ONT has had more partnerships in recent years (about 20 logos show up on a JPM slide highlighting partnerships), but has still tended to be a "go it alone" company.
Otherwise small or no updates. Roche's presentation was entirely around their pharmaceutical business, so nothing on Axelios 1. ThermoFisher had an image of their integrated Genexus sequencer in their slide, but not much else on sequencing. Ultima (another private so unavailable talk) mostly promised updates at AGBT and said they've doubled installs (but nobody knows 2X of what), again according to GenomeWeb
There was a brief series of years where sequencing companies made huge announcements at JPM. But that's really a bean counter and stock picker venue, so I'm not unhappy to see little more than teasers there. AGBT does promise to be more exciting, with opportunities to grill all the companies on their menu of upgrades.
Links to Presentations
Illumina - IR Page with webcast & slides
Oxford Nanopore Technologies - webcast & slide deck
Pacific Biosciences - landing page for webcast & slide deck
ThermoFisher Scientific - IR page with link to webcast
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