Bay Area's Complete Genomics Loses Staff as BGI Shifts Strategy
December 1, 2015
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – Complete Genomics will slash staff as the Bay Area company undergoes a transformation into a R&D-based company to support the clinical work of its China-based parent company, BGI, GenomeWeb reported Monday night.
It was not reported how many individuals the company would be terminating, however, Cliff Reid, the outgoing chief executive officer, told GenomeWeb the layoffs would be “substantial reduction” of staff. The company currently has approximately 200 employees. Reid is expected to resign as CEO, but will remain at the helm of the company through the reorganization, GenomeWeb reported.
As part of the restructuring, Complete Genomics, which was once one of the largest sequencing service providers in the United States, has put its Revolocity high-throughput human genome sequencing system on hold, GenomeWeb said. Instead, Complete Genomics will support BGI's BGISEQ-500, a smaller desktop sequencer, ChinaBio reported. The timing of the reorganization is rather surprising, considering in October the U.K. Epilepsy Society became the third customer for the company’s Revolocity system. The other Revolocity customers are Radboud University Medical Center in the Netherlands and Mater Health Services in Australia. The three customers acquired Complete Genomics systems for a combined price of approximately $36 million and were expecting delivery of the systems in the first half of 2016. Complete Genomics is no longer taking orders for the Revolocity system. Reid said Complete Genomics is working with the three customers to figure out a solution for their sequencing needs. He told GenomeWeb that there would be delays in filling the orders for the three customers.
The Revolocity sequencing system was designed to deliver 10,000 whole genome sequences (WGS) a year, and expand to 30,000 WGS per year, surpassing the scalability of any other sequencing solution available today, Complete Genomics said during the European Human Genetics Conference in June. The Revolocity system supports whole exome sequencing (WES). It automates DNA purification from a variety of starting materials, including whole human blood and saliva, and then processes samples seamlessly through the library preparation, sequencing, and data analysis phases. The Revolocity system provides data on small variants, including SNPs, insertions, deletions, block substitutions as well as CNVs and structural variants, the company said.
BGI acquired Complete Genomics in 2013. In October, BGI launched its desktop sequencer BGISEQ-500, which the company claims achieves “99.99 percent” accuracy. BGI’s sequencing system is based on Complete Genomics Revolocity system. In October Xu Xun, director of BGI research and the company’s chief scientist, said in a statement that the two separate sequencing systems will “better serve the needs of different partners and accelerate the potential for sequencing technology to be used for even more applications.” BGI’s system is currently available in China.