How to get ahead

摘要

Genome technologists are on the verge of fulfilling a goal that was once considered so far off as to be almost fictional: the sequencing of human genomes for US$1,000 apiece. Eleven years ago, when genome sequencing cost tens of millions of dollars, scientists from the US National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) in Bethesda, Maryland, said that, should it be met, the $1,000 goal "would revolutionize biomedical research and clinical practice". The price of sequencing has indeed dropped - and this development is changing science and beginning to change medicine. In retrospect, it may seem that it was inevitable that the cost would come down from what it was at the close of the Human Genome Project in 2003. Entrepreneurs and scientists were already working on technologies to replace Sanger sequencing, the workhorse of the genome project. But these entrepreneurs and other genome technologists give at least some of the credit for the precipitous price drop to the NHGRI. In 2003 it launched the $230-million Advanced Sequencing Technology programme, to support research to improve genome technology in academia and industry (see page 294). The programme will give out its final grants this year, but it has provided some key lessons on how to set up similar sponsored innovation efforts.