 | |
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Biotechnology Personal Genomics |
| Founded | 2018 |
| Founder | George Church Dennis Grishin Kamal Obbad |
| Headquarters | |
| Services | Genetic testing Whole-genome sequencing |
| Website | www |
Nebula Genomics is a personal genomics company based in San Francisco, California. It offers a whole-genome sequencing service. [1] [2]
Nebula Genomics was co-founded in 2018 by George Church, geneticist at Harvard Medical School. [3] [4] In August 2018, Nebula Genomics announced a seed funding round of $4.3 million led by Khosla Ventures. [5] [6] In February 2020, Nebula Genomics began offering high-coverage whole-genome sequencing for $299 internationally. [7] The service also requires a subscription to Nebula Explore. [8]
On 11 August 2021, ProPhase Labs, a diversified medical science and technology company, announced the acquisition of Nebula Genomics by its recently formed subsidiary, ProPhase Precision Medicine, Inc., for about $14.6 million in a combination of ProPhase Labs common stock and cash. [9]
BGI Group is a Chinese life sciences company that has been part of many controversies, especially regarding genetic data. One of these concerns one of the most popular prenatal test in the world, Reuters found out that it has been developed with the involvement of Chinese's army, People's Liberation Army (PLA), and has been used to collect genetic data from millions of women. [10] George Church, the co-founder of Nebula Genomics, has served on the BGI Group's scientific advisory board since 2007. [11] In 2017, BGI established the George Church Institute of Regenesis, a research collaboration between Church’s lab and about a dozen staffers at BGI in China. On 18 February 2020, Nebula Genomics also announced that it had partnered up with BGI: saliva samples sent for decoding to Nebula Genomics are sent by the company to BGI labs in Hong Kong for sequencing. [12] In 2022 Nebula Genomics stated in its FAQs that the samples are sequenced in Europe. [13] However, in 2023 no specific statement of sequencing location exists in the FAQs. Nebula Genomics said that this partnership is made to bring down the cost of whole-genome sequencing since normally it has a cost that makes it inaccessible to most people. [14]
Nebula Genomics says that it is developing its own blockchain to enforce security and privacy but, despite that, re-identification of people starting from the genetic data could still be possible (DNA itself is a unique identifier), law enforcement could still issue search warrants or subpoena the data, and difficulties related to encrypting whole genomes mean that this technology could still be vulnerable to data breaches. [15] [16] This is also stated in Nebula Genomics' Privacy Policy: "However, under certain circumstances your genetic information may be subject to processing pursuant to laws, regulations or judicial or governmental orders, warrants or subpoenas. [17] In other words, a lawful demand by public authorities may require we share your personal Information", they also state that: "We may share your personal data if we believe it is reasonably necessary to enforce the Nebula Terms and Conditions, protect the security and integrity of our Services, or protect the rights, safety, or property of Nebula, our employees or users". About data breaches risk it's written that: "While we cannot guarantee that loss, access or misuse of data will not occur, we use reasonable efforts to prevent these outcomes." [18]
Nebula Genomics develops technologies to enable controllable, transparent and secure genomic data sharing. [19] It is also developing approaches for privacy-preserving analysis of genomic datasets. [20] [21]
In 2019, Nebula Genomics won the “Best-in-Show” award at the SXSW Pitch competition, part of the South by Southwest festival. [22]
A DNA sequencer is a scientific instrument used to automate the DNA sequencing process. Given a sample of DNA, a DNA sequencer is used to determine the order of the four bases: G (guanine), C (cytosine), A (adenine) and T (thymine). This is then reported as a text string, called a read. Some DNA sequencers can be also considered optical instruments as they analyze light signals originating from fluorochromes attached to nucleotides.
BGI Group, formerly Beijing Genomics Institute, is a Chinese genomics company with headquarters in Yantian, Shenzhen. The company was originally formed in 1999 as a genetics research center to participate in the Human Genome Project. It also sequences the genomes of other animals, plants and microorganisms.
The Personal Genome Project (PGP) is a long term, large cohort study which aims to sequence and publicize the complete genomes and medical records of 100,000 volunteers, in order to enable research into personal genomics and personalized medicine. It was initiated by Harvard University's George M. Church in 2005. As of November 2017, more than 10,000 volunteers had joined the project. Volunteers were accepted initially if they were permanent residents of the US and were able to submit tissue and/or genetic samples. Later the project was expanded to other countries.
George McDonald Church is an American geneticist, molecular engineer, chemist, serial entrepreneur, and pioneer in personal genomics and synthetic biology. He is the Robert Winthrop Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School, Professor of Health Sciences and Technology at Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a founding member of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University.
Illumina, Inc. is an American biotechnology company, headquartered in San Diego, California. Incorporated on April 1, 1998, Illumina develops, manufactures, and markets integrated systems for the analysis of genetic variation and biological function. The company provides a line of products and services that serves the sequencing, genotyping and gene expression, and proteomics markets, and serves more than 155 countries.
Personal genomics or consumer genetics is the branch of genomics concerned with the sequencing, analysis and interpretation of the genome of an individual. The genotyping stage employs different techniques, including single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) analysis chips, or partial or full genome sequencing. Once the genotypes are known, the individual's variations can be compared with the published literature to determine likelihood of trait expression, ancestry inference and disease risk.
The 1000 Genomes Project (1KGP), taken place from January 2008 to 2015, was an international research effort to establish the most detailed catalogue of human genetic variation at the time. Scientists planned to sequence the genomes of at least one thousand anonymous healthy participants from a number of different ethnic groups within the following three years, using advancements in newly developed technologies. In 2010, the project finished its pilot phase, which was described in detail in a publication in the journal Nature. In 2012, the sequencing of 1092 genomes was announced in a Nature publication. In 2015, two papers in Nature reported results and the completion of the project and opportunities for future research.
Whole genome sequencing (WGS), also known as full genome sequencing, complete genome sequencing, or entire genome sequencing, is the process of determining the entirety, or nearly the entirety, of the DNA sequence of an organism's genome at a single time. This entails sequencing all of an organism's chromosomal DNA as well as DNA contained in the mitochondria and, for plants, in the chloroplast.
Complete Genomics is a life sciences company that has developed and commercialized a DNA sequencing platform for human genome sequencing and analysis. This solution combines the company's proprietary human genome sequencing technology with its informatics and data management software to provide finished variant reports and assemblies at Complete Genomics’ commercial genome center in Mountain View, California.
The 1000 Plant Transcriptomes Initiative (1KP) was an international research effort to establish the most detailed catalogue of genetic variation in plants. It was announced in 2008 and headed by Gane Ka-Shu Wong and Michael Deyholos of the University of Alberta. The project successfully sequenced the transcriptomes of 1000 different plant species by 2014; its final capstone products were published in 2019.
Exome sequencing, also known as whole exome sequencing (WES), is a genomic technique for sequencing all of the protein-coding regions of genes in a genome. It consists of two steps: the first step is to select only the subset of DNA that encodes proteins. These regions are known as exons—humans have about 180,000 exons, constituting about 1% of the human genome, or approximately 30 million base pairs. The second step is to sequence the exonic DNA using any high-throughput DNA sequencing technology.
Knome, Inc. was a human genome interpretation company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Launched in 2007, Knome focused on improving quality of life by applying insights gained from the interpretation of human genomes. They helped identify and classify the variants, genes, and gene sets that are likely to govern or underlie a specific disease, tumor, or drug response. Their clients included academic, pharmaceutical and medical researchers. In 2015, it was acquired by Tute Genomics.
The $1,000 genome refers to an era of predictive and personalized medicine during which the cost of fully sequencing an individual's genome (WGS) is roughly one thousand USD. It is also the title of a book by British science writer and founding editor of Nature Genetics, Kevin Davies. By late 2015, the cost to generate a high-quality "draft" whole human genome sequence was just below $1,500.
Genetic privacy involves the concept of personal privacy concerning the storing, repurposing, provision to third parties, and displaying of information pertaining to one's genetic information. This concept also encompasses privacy regarding the ability to identify specific individuals by their genetic sequence, and the potential to gain information on specific characteristics about that person via portions of their genetic information, such as their propensity for specific diseases or their immediate or distant ancestry.
DNA encryption is the process of hiding or perplexing genetic information by a computational method in order to improve genetic privacy in DNA sequencing processes. The human genome is complex and long, but it is very possible to interpret important, and identifying, information from smaller variabilities, rather than reading the entire genome. A whole human genome is a string of 3.2 billion base paired nucleotides, the building blocks of life, but between individuals the genetic variation differs only by 0.5%, an important 0.5% that accounts for all of human diversity, the pathology of different diseases, and ancestral story. Emerging strategies incorporate different methods, such as randomization algorithms and cryptographic approaches, to de-identify the genetic sequence from the individual, and fundamentally, isolate only the necessary information while protecting the rest of the genome from unnecessary inquiry. The priority now is to ascertain which methods are robust, and how policy should ensure the ongoing protection of genetic privacy.
Helix is an American population genomics company.
Veritas Genetics is a personal genomics startup based in Danvers, Massachusetts. According to the company's press release, it was among the first companies to offer whole genome sequencing and interpretation for under $1,000.
Sophia Genetics is a data-driven medicine software company with headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland and Boston, Massachusetts. It provides genomic and radiomic analysis for hospitals, laboratories, and biopharma institutions. The company was ranked among the 50 smartest companies by the MIT Technology Review in 2017. The company went public on the Nasdaq in 2021, floating at $1.1B.
Wang Jian is a Chinese geneticist and businessman. He is Chairman and co-founder of the BGI Genomics.
MGI or MGI Tech is a Chinese biotechnology company, which provides a line of products and technologies that serves the genetic sequencing, genotyping and gene expression, and proteomics markets. Its headquarters are located in Shenzhen, China.
Where will my sample be sequenced? We sequence our samples in a laboratory in the European Union (EU).