Technology: The $1,000 genome
Imagine for a moment that you have back ten years, and as the health research responsible in the government you decide to allocate $230 million to achieve a $1000 individual genome sequencing. At that moment there was a monopoly by one company, Sanger. Your effort was to promote genomic applied research, better sequencing, and doing so, the monopoly would be undermined.
This is precisely what the US government did through the Advanced sequencing technology awards and right now has achieved its aim, a more efficient sequencing. They have been extremely successful and are closing the program (NHGRI) this year: the goal has been achieved.
The funds allowed to break the former monopoly (Applied Biosystems) and at the same time, ten years later, a new quasi-monopoly has appeared (
Illumina). This extraordinary story is well explained in
Nature:
Researchers are optimistic that another technology will emerge to
challenge Illumina. Most think, in fact, that the crucial questions for
the field will shift away from technology. Now that sequencing is cheap
enough to talk about scanning every patient's genome, or at least the
protein-coding portion of it, it is still not clear how that information
will translate into improved care (see Nature http://doi.org/rvq;
2014). These more complex issues will require another great leap in
genomic science — one that could make the trouncing of Moore's law seem
easy.
PS. For those that support patents, this is a good example of how prizes substitute patents to spur innovation and confirms
Mckinsey article.