Even though the history of next-generation sequencing is short (the 454 GS20 came out in 2005, the Solexa 1G in 2007, and the SOLiD 2 in 2008), there is a robust genomic revolution going on, and a fierce battle in the marketplace with plummeting costs and soaring throughput. Whether Moore’s Law is beat by some 2.5-fold or even faster, there is no question that we are in the middle of burgeoning growth, remarkable discovery, and new insights and discoveries just about every day.
Life in the next-generation world moves quickly. And I’m talking not about next-generation sequencing, but something termed ‘next-generation PCR’ by internal folks at Life Technology, and can be described as ‘third-generation PCR’ if one thinks about the Polymerase Chain Reaction in terms of measurement.
One of the great privileges of working on the marketing side of a life sciences company (compared to the sales side) is the ability to go to a lot of conferences. As a sales representative, it was a hit-or-miss affair, whether I’d be one of the ‘chosen ones’ to go to AGBT, ASHG (now called ICHG), or ABRF.
(For those who are not in genomics, AGBT = Advances in Genome Biology and Technology; ASHG = American Society for Human Genetics; ABRF = Association of Biomolecular Resource Facilities.)
And for a sales rep, it’s a difficult task; you encounter potential customers from many quarters, increasing the sales footprint for the company as a whole, but not so rewarding for your own particular territory. On top of that, you can’t participate in the science per-se, but certainly will have other opportunities to interact with the conference attendees, and glean some of the ‘take-home’ lessons second-hand, if they are so inclined to ask.
February 2008, Marco Island Florida – an exciting time in the world of NGS, the first pioneering papers were being published using short-read sequencing that are now every-day applications – ChIP, RNA-Seq, small RNA, the first whole genomes.
“The future is already here – it’s just not very evenly distributed.” – William Gibson
This is a blog about next-generation sequencing and it’s intersection with marketing and business in general (primarily), which happens to be my particular area of professional expertise, having focused on next-generation sequencing since late 2006, when Illumina (my then-employer) acquired a startup called Solexa for $417M. I have had product development, product management, marketing (all in the San Diego area with Illumina) and key-account sales roles (in the Mid-Atlantic region of the US serving both the NIH and the entire SouthEast region with Illumina, RainDance Technologies and currently with Life Technologies). I am presently in a marketing role at Life Technologies Corporation (which used to be Applied Biosystems and Invitrogen Corporation), heavily involved with both the Ion Torrent PGM / Proton as well as the SOLiD / 5500 platforms. (More information about me can be found here; if you are interested in anything Ion Torrent and NGS market overall you’ve come to the right place.)