NIH money to support better gene sequencing

David Ortiz

08/11/2007

JOHN OLIVER, left, vice president of R&D at NABsys, has been awarded a federal grant for his genome sequencing work. At right is NABsys President and CEO Barrett Bready. /

Two researchers affiliated with a Providence-based life sciences startup were recently awarded prestigious grants for their work to develop a widely affordable method of genome sequencing.
On Aug. 2, John Oliver, vice president of research and development for NABsys Inc., and Xinsheng Ling, a founder of the company and an associate professor of physics at Brown University, received two of eight grants awarded by the National Human Genome Research Institute, an arm of the National Institutes of Health.
The NHGRI – the foremost authority on DNA sequencing in the world – awarded grants totaling $15 million to eight researchers in all throughout the United States and Canada.
A genome is the total DNA sequence that characterizes an individual’s genetic makeup. Using current technology it costs at least $5 million to sequence a single person’s genome.
The annual grants are aimed at speeding research to lower the cost of DNA sequencing to $1,000 per person, enabling the technology to be widely used by doctors to determine a patient’s predisposition to particular diseases and by pharmaceutical companies to develop more effective drugs.
“Personalized medicine is going to be a huge part of medicine and biotechnology, and to have two of those eight investigators in North America located here is a huge deal,” said Dr. Barrett Bready, NABsys’ president and CEO.
The term “personalized medicine” does not imply that patients would receive drugs designed just for them or personal dietary regiments based on their genetic makeup, but the promise of being able to sequence every patient’s DNA is vast nonetheless, Bready said.
“A baby would be born and he would have his genome sequenced, and he would go through life knowing his predisposition to complex diseases like heart disease and cancer, and know what medications to take in advance of any symptoms to prevent or delay the onset of those diseases, and then which drugs to avoid so as not to have an adverse reaction,” he said.
Widespread patient DNA sequencing also would help drug companies conduct clinical trials more quickly to learn what medicines will and won’t work for certain people, Bready said.
“Everyone knows about the Vioxx case,” he said. “It would be nice to know which people are going to have that adverse reaction, so you don’t have to take the multibillion-dollar drug off the market – you can just not give it to people who would have the bad reaction. And similarly, you don’t want to give it to people for whom it doesn’t work, and you’d be able to tell that too.”
Ling’s grant is a three-year, $820,000 award made to Brown University, which has a research and development partnership and an exclusive licensing deal with NABsys. Oliver’s grant is a $500,000 award over two years, making NABsys the only private company to get an award this year.
NABsys is working to develop a proprietary Hybridization-Assisted Nanopore Sequencing platform, which essentially would sequence a patient’s genome by passing the DNA through a hole one-billionth of a meter wide and use a process called hybridization to make the DNA easier to read.
The company aims to be able to sequence a patient’s genome for less than $1,000 within four years, Bready said.
Bready, a doctor who received his medical degree at Brown, founded NABsys in 2004 with partners that included Ling, who was Bready’s physics professor while he was an undergraduate. Last December, the company acquired GeneSpectrum Inc. – a firm doing similar gene sequencing research and development – in an all-stock transaction.
The NHGRI grants will enable the company, which currently has four employees, to hire a couple of new scientists to help develop the HANS platform.
“It’s a very interdisciplinary platform,” he said. “We’re really pushing the envelope, if you will, on physics, biochemistry and also computer science.”
Because they were awarded by the leading institute pushing the science of DNA sequencing, the grants also will help the company to attract further investment; NABsys is currently seeking additional rounds of financing, largely from private sources, Bready said.
“From our perspective, the prestige of these awards is the biggest thing,” he said.