Expanding market of new generation sequencing

The IVD market in coming 2–3 years is expected to be around USD 2000 million, which means Rs 150-billion industry in India alone. This is going to further grow sharply unexpectedly after the Covid-19 pandemic. The pandemic has hampered world economy as such, and innovations in other fields of health services, yet this loss is expected to be compensated by the coronavirus-related IVD, particularly the homecare devices, rapid antigen test kits, RT-PCR and related accessories, and also with the development of vaccines. Covid-19-specific therapeutics have been in great demand. This demand includes for steroids, monoclonals, intensive care-related equipment and disposables, medical oxygen, repeated biomarker monitoring of patients of Covid-19, and the nutritional supplements.

However, the major jump has been in the field of new-generation sequencing, which is going to sustain for a very long time to come. Even though the whole-genome sequencing (WGS) has been growing for the last 2 decades. especially for HIV, tuberculosis, hepatitis, other pathogens, genetic disorders, and gene therapy, but it has seen a leap after mutations in the SARS-Cov-2. GISAID (Global Initiative on Sharing all Influenza Data) emphasized on whole-genome sequencing data of influenza and now SARS-COv-2 virus-infected samples from all over the world to understand the molecular epidemiology of these pandemic-causing viruses. The recent Covid-19 pandemic has made it most pertinent. The Indian government has also formed an Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (INSACOG), which emphasizes monitoring of all mutants through whole genome sequencing.

With this, I think the market of new-generation sequencing-related devices is going to increase further.

There are several new-generation sequencing platforms available in the market that are being used for targeted as well as whole-genome sequencing. All these platforms provide whole-genome sequencing data, but have different principles of testing like whether they have the short-length reading or the long-read platforms or whether they have the amplification-based sequencing or they have real-time single-molecule-detection systems. Some of these also have different chemistry in the preparation of DNA libraries and detection methods, so these are the sum of the methods and the types which are used in the market of course. Some of the brands are commonly used while others are new and picking up the installations. Of course, number one remains the Illumina sequencing platform, which controls more than 80 percent of the Indian market. This system or the platform offers a range of low- to high-throughput testing models, such as MiniSeq, MiSeq, HiSeq, NovaSeq, and NextSeq.

The second player are Ion Torrent, which is controlling about 12–15 perecent market. There are three models, the PGM Ion Torrent, being the first and now very rarely in use, the S5 and Proton model. These are being marketed in India through Thermo Fisher Scientific.

The number three sequencing systems are from Pacific Bioscience, in short known as PacBio. This technology, a third-generation sequencing system, was introduced only in 2014. These new generation sequencing platforms are being marketed by Pacific Bioscience. There are two models, the PacBio-RSII and PacBio Sequel.

Another third-generation sequencing technology is Nanopore sequencing platform, introduced in 2008. The top players in the Nanopore technology market are Oxford Nanopore Technologies, NorthShore Bio, Nabsys LLC, Electronic BioSciences, Quantapore Inc., Stratos Genomics, Noblegen Biosciences, and other key market players.

This single-nucleotide system measures the changes in the electrical conductivity of nucleotides of DNA, with different molecular weight pass through the biological nanopore. During this process the detector records and identifies each of the four nucleotides (ATG or C) and on the basis, the sequence reads are analyzed. There are at least three models, these are MiniIon, GridIon, and PromethIon. However, these systems have high error rates.

Even though all third-generation sequencing platforms can be used for whole-genome sequencing, Epigenome sequencing and Transcriptome sequencing and any other targeted sequencing, the Oxford nanopore platforms have made significant contribution in the field of SARS-Cov-2 sequencing, mainly, because the turnaround time (TAT) is very short, the cost of the setup is also low, and results are displayed in real-time manner.