AGBT 2026 Preview

AGBT starts on Monday at the Signia by Hilton Bonnet Creek in Orlando on Monday, but the pre-conference flurry of announcements is already rolling out.  Here is a quick scan of what's already been telegraphed to be in store next week - and expect more announcements over the next few days.  I'm getting to Orlando on Friday - far before most people so perhaps I can actually focus on writing (though I also have a backlog of follow-ups from last week's SLAS lab automation conference).   I've supplied links for many of these items, though in some cases it isn't easy to find a single link to include

Pancreatic Adenocarcinoma Mutation Trajectories at Single Cell Resolution

Single cell RNA sequencing is nearly ubiquitous; single cell DNA sequencing has been much rarer.  I'm going to dive in a bit - but not a full review - of a recent paper which described single cell DNA sequencing of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinomas.  The paper applied the Mission Bio droplet-based PCR approach, which hasn't had quite the buzz of its close technological cousin 10X Genomics.  And there are some interesting implications of the findings in this paper to impending developments in oncology therapeutics - including one in which I have more than academic interest.

Non-coding DNA's Alpha Moment

I had been meaning to read the AlphaGenome paper on non-coding variant effect prediction from Google DeepMind which recently showed up in Nature, but had found excuses not to dive in.  Then DeciBio’s Stephane Budel posted on LinkedIn with some incisive comments and few things spur me to action better than my sense of competition! So here's a quick, incomplete & imperfect take on this giant paper.

Sequencer vs. Library Prep Market Structures

Something I started pondering as I was prepping my JP Morgan items: the structure of the market for sequencing library prep is very different from that for sequencers.  Perhaps this is painfully obvious to many, but I hadn't turned it over before in my mind.   It also follows that the sequencer market was overweighted in who was invited to give talks at the banking conference - nearly every sequencer maker was there - Complete Genomics and Singular Genomics were the missing parties (and Singular is a bit of a quasi-sequencer company now).  Note that in this piece I will not claim a complete census of companies in this space - though please feel free to note exceptions in the comments

P2 Solo: ONT Extends Support But Not Sales

A brief update to the earlier P2 Solo piece - Oxford Nanopore has now announced they will extend their support for the device until 2030, but they are still ending sales this summer.  So a cosmetic victory for Solo fans, but not really much gain - and certainly disappointing for anyone saving their quid for a future purchase.  Solos may become very valuable, though it's hard to see ONT ever countenancing a healthy resale market.

ONT Axes P2 Solo, Roiling Community

Oxford Nanopore has a serious case of user community unrest, triggered by the announcement that the P2 Solo (aka P2s) will be phased out starting this summer.  P2 Solo is the two flowcell version of PromethION which required external GPU for basecalling; P2i is the sibling with onboard GPU. P2 Solo clearly has a very passionate constituency, one which feels betrayed by its discontinuation.  This ongoing episode - ONT could always change their mind and restore the P2 Solo - is a cautionary tale of the challenges of changing corporate strategy in the context of a brand which has built a near cult-like loyalty. 

JP Morgan 2026 Roundup

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.