likes of Foundation Medicine and Complete
Genomics, but rather to set a precedent. “We’re
sort of prototyping things so that companies
will get behind this and sort of operationalize
things much better so that we can get out of this
business and let professionals do it!” he says.
Indeed, many companies are finding the
greatest near-term opportunities in partnering
directly with academic centers and clinics
to help improve their capacity for sequencingbased
patient assessment. For example, Knome
is launching their knomeCLINIC product,
designed to deliver robust computational
infrastructure for genomic data processing and
interpretation to hospitals and medical centers.
“We have this informatics platform that can
analyze and interpret genetic information, and
what we need to do is to build the clinicianfacing
tools and integration into the hospital
system,” explains CEO Martin Tolar.
The product will initially be made available
to a handful of partners through an earlyaccess
program. “Right now there are half-adozen
clinics that want to install our solution
so that they can utilize genomic data in their
clinical practice,” says Tolar. On the technology
and expertise side, Life Technologies is
collaborating with a number of institutions to
help launch dedicated genomics research facilities.
“We’re educating groups on what we could
do with them, and they’re taking the bull by
the horns and beginning to create their own
sequencing businesses using our platforms,”
says Andrews.
Genome Health Solutions aims to take an
even broader view, working with clients to
navigate their way through the complex maze
of procedural issues. “Technology is only
one part—there’s reimbursement, regulation
and intellectual property and all these other
things,” says Boguski. “Our company is poised
to solve these problems for all stakeholders,
and not just match up technology with a new
application.”
However, the field may receive the greatest
boost from a series of national and multinational
initiatives now under way in Europe.
Among the most notable of these is the
Norwegian Cancer Genomics Consortium, a
project initiated by research groups at hospitals
across the nation, with growing support from
pharma and biotech companies. If successful,
the consortium could become the world’s first
nationwide initiative to sequence tumor and
healthy tissue from every cancer patient. “We’re
getting started now on planning to sequence
exomes from a couple thousand patient samples,
both tumor and blood, across eight different
cancer types,” says Ola Myklebost, a