Sichuan Online news (Reporter Wang Yue intern Chen Minhong Yang Kun) Sichuan Science and Technology Department "2018 Sichuan Province Biotechnology and medicine major science and technology special project support, allocated funds of 2 million yuan, the province''s medical equipment category only 3 projects to get special funding... The above is located in Chengdu high-tech Zone Tianfu Life Science and Technology Park, Jinshi Technology Co., LTD. (hereinafter referred to as "Jinshi Technology") research and development of the fourth generation of nanopore gene sequencer core microflow chip "project support. In the field of biomedicine, precision medicine is an emerging method of disease prevention and treatment that takes into account the differences in individual genes, environment and living habits. Gene sequencing is the cornerstone of precision medicine, which is conducive to improving the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of diseases and improving the health of the whole people.

Determined to use "hundreds of dollars, a few drops of blood, a few hours" for gene sequencing

"In layman''s terms, our human genetic code is like a book, and how to interpret the contents of this book requires genetic sequencing." When talking about gene sequencing, Su Yunpeng, founder and CEO of today''s technology, said that Today''s technology has begun the research and development of the fourth-generation nanopore gene sequencer core microflow chip. The core component of the fourth-generation gene sequencer is a microstream chip used to generate sequencing signals. The research and development of the chip involves protein chemistry, biological materials, electronic materials, micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) process and other fields, which is a typical complex system engineering. Even in the world, the research and development of this type of chip is not fully mature, and it still needs to be continuously improved in many aspects such as accuracy, stability, and service life to meet market demand.

At present, the world''s mainstream sequencing is the second generation of gene sequencing led by illumina, which accounts for nearly 80% of the market share. The throughput of second-generation sequencing is large, and the price is greatly reduced compared with first-generation sequencing. In Su Yunpeng''s view, the second generation of gene sequencing technology still has great shortcomings, "First of all, read long too short, our human genes this book can also be understood as a puzzle, it has a total of 6 billion pixels, the second generation of sequencing needs to break up the puzzle, through the fragments to read." Each piece is only about 150-300 pixels, and the tens of millions of puzzle pieces need to be put together, and the algorithm is difficult and the calculation is very large. And more importantly, the large number of structural defects and high concentration of GC segments in complex genomes such as humans cannot be successfully pieced together, resulting in incomplete jigsaw and therefore cannot meet the requirements of most clinical applications." Second, the price is too high, a person''s whole gene sequencing needs to cost about 30,000 yuan, which is difficult for ordinary people to afford, so it has not been large-scale application.

"These are problems that fourth-generation nanopore sequencers can solve." In the face of the above bottleneck problems, today is science and technology is trying to break the bottleneck of this industry by developing the fourth generation of nanopore gene sequencer. According to Su Yunpeng, the vision of today''s science and technology is to achieve "hundreds of yuan, a few drops of blood, and a few hours" in the field of precision medicine. "A few hundred yuan" means that the price is low, and the price of human whole gene sequencing will be reduced to several hundred yuan; "A few drops of blood" means that only a small sample, such as blood, body fluids or tissue, can be sequenced; "A few hours" means that the detection is convenient, and the sequencing report can be obtained on the same day.

The market prospect is broad. Commercial products are expected to be launched in 2022

It is reported that gene sequencing first entered the public''s vision in the 1990s, with the successful development of the "human genome project", global scientists spent billions of dollars, in about 15 years to interpret the template of the human genome. With the continuous upgrading of sequencing technology, according to the pharmaceutical giant Roche forecast that by 2025, the entire upstream and downstream market size of gene sequencing will exceed 600 billion US dollars.

According to the plan, the science and technology plan is to launch 8-16 channel sequencing principle prototype at the end of 2018, launch industrial prototype with main performance meeting the design requirements in 2020, and launch market-oriented testing products in 2021. After the commercial testing machine is launched, it will collect the needs of target customers, and then iterate products according to the needs of customers to optimize equipment performance and functions. The final commercial product will be launched in 2022. "It is expected that the commercial product will achieve annual sales revenue of 1 billion yuan within three years after its launch, and is expected to break the monopoly of European and American manufacturers in the domestic market in the field of gene sequencing."

It is understood that with the joint efforts of today''s science and technology team, the topic of "development of the fourth generation of nanopore gene sequencer core microfluidic chip" has been supported by the "Major science and Technology Project of Sichuan Province Biotechnology and Medicine in 2018" by the Science and Technology Department of Sichuan Province, with an allocation of 2 million yuan. "This special funding will mainly be used for the development of biological materials used in chips, chip flow and testing," Su Yunpeng said the company expects to invest more than 7 million yuan within three years. "Being able to obtain funding shows that the evaluation experts have recognized our technical advantages, team strength and project prospects, and we will take the development of fourth-generation gene sequencer chips with superior performance as the overall goal, not only to fully grasp, but also to innovate and improve the core preparation technology of chips."

Chengdu High-tech Zone helps incubate the biomedical industry

With the dream of developing a gene sequencer that everyone could afford, a few PhD students and their classmates came to Chengdu''s high-tech zone a year ago and founded what is now Jinshi Technology Co., LTD. In October 2017, today is officially signed to settle in Tianfu Life Science and Technology Park.

"Our founders are all from Sichuan, and we want to realize our dreams in our hometown." After visiting many places, he finally chose to start a business in Chengdu, and landed the company in the high-tech zone Tianfu Life Science and Technology Park, Su Yunpeng said: "Settled here, not only because Chengdu is our hometown, we see the future of China''s biological medicine here."

According to reports, after science and technology settled in the high-tech zone, it has received many policy support and help from the district government. Settled in Tianfu Life Science and Technology Park, the high-tech zone government also gave this year''s technology rent reduction concessions, and in the next two years, it will also get 800 square meters of free land and 5 million yuan of capital matching concessions. In addition, Tianfu Life Science and Technology Park''s rich biomedical and chip design and processing supporting industrial resources will also provide a lot of help and research and development resources for today''s science and technology.

(This is technology map)

Original address：click