Co-founders of Nebula Genomics Dr. George Church and Dennis Grishin were invited to lecture at the joint MIT-CEIBS program on March 14, 2018 at the MIT Sloan School of Management. CEIBS (China Europe International Business School) is a top Chinese business school founded in a collaboration between the Chinese government and the European Union. The lecture was attended by students of the program as well as by Chinese entrepreneurs and top Chinese investors.
Dr. Church first detailed the economic factors that will drive the proliferation of genomic sequencing in the future. Importantly, the cost of genomic sequencing has been decreasing and will continue to decrease at an extremely rapid rate. The first human genome to be sequenced was completed in 2003 and cost about $3 billion, while today it only costs $1000 to sequence a whole genome and this price is expected to continue to decrease in the future.
Another factor Dr. Church discussed is that approximately 5% of births result in medical complications due to genetic disease that ultimately cost the family and society more than $1 million dollars over the course of the individual’s life. This represents the sum of the costs of drugs, diagnostics, instruments, and general care as well as loss of income and the costs associated with the pain and anxiety of the “medical odyssey”. Since whole genome sequencing based carrier screening can prevent these births and therefore allow the healthcare economy to recover that money, whole genome sequencing can largely pay for itself once it is adopted on a larger scale. However, a survey conducted by our team suggests that individuals are hesitant to have their genomes sequenced despite the potential medical benefits because they consider the current $1000 price to still be too high and because of privacy concerns.
Our team went on to describe how the Nebula platform addresses these issues. It assuages monetary concerns by allowing data buyers to use phenotypic data provided through surveys or uploaded EHRs to identify potential contributors with genomes of interest and subsidize the sequencing of those contributors. The implementation of secure computing and blockchain technologies addresses privacy concerns by giving contributors ownership over their data and allowing buyers to compute on it without ever giving them access to the data in plaintext.
Finally, as the price of sequencing decreases, there will be an explosion in the rate at which genomic data is produced. At that point, the Nebula platform will be invaluable in aggregating that data in a standardized format, associating phenotypic data with genomic data to help buyers more efficiently assemble cohorts, and providing a simple, low-friction process through which data contributors can monetize their data and give access to buyers.
Afterwards, our team had the opportunity to discuss our platform with the Chinese entrepreneurial community. Through continued exposure to entrepreneurs as well as members of industry and academia, we hope to gain further insight into the obstacles slowing the effective utilization of genomic data and assure that our platform addresses these obstacles.
Author : erwin_ibrahim
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