By Bhanvi Satija and Marleen Kaesebier <\/p>\n
LONDON\/ZURICH, June 29 (Reuters) – Swiss pharma and diagnostics giant Roche on Monday \u200claunched its long-awaited Axelios gene sequencer, in a bid \u200cto challenge U.S. firm Illumina’s leadership in next-generation sequencing. <\/p>\n
Roche’s launch is limited \u200bto academic and research-focused facilities and comes more than a decade after the group’s failed $6.8 billion hostile bid to acquire Illumina. <\/p>\n
The Axelios platform is designed to rapidly read and analyse \u200cDNA at scale, supporting \u2060applications from disease research to drug development. <\/p>\n
Analysts say Roche’s entry is likely to be a \u2060gradual push for market share rather than a rapid disruption of the sector, which is valued at about $7.3 billion. Illumina remains \u200bthe \u200bclear leader, with estimates putting \u200bits share of NGS systems \u200cat around 70%. <\/p>\n
Roche said it aims to place about 100 machines in the first year, a target that will lay the foundation for a future “blockbuster” franchise generating over 1 billion Swiss francs ($1.1 billion) in annual sales over the long \u200cterm. <\/p>\n
The company has partnered with 10x \u200bGenomics and Google DeepVariant for data \u200banalysis, backed by \u200bearly platform validation from Broad Clinical Labs and \u200cthe Hartwig Medical Foundation to \u200bease adoption. <\/p>\n
Roche said \u200bit has already begun commercial shipments and booked pre-orders. The launch is focused on U.S., UK, Germany, France, \u200bamong others and \u200cRoche expects to quickly expand into other geographies. <\/p>\n
(Reporting by \u200bBhanvi Satija in London and Marleen Kaesebier in \u200bZurich, Editing by Louise Heavens) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Bhanvi Satija and Marleen Kaesebier LONDON\/ZURICH, June 29 (Reuters) – Swiss pharma and diagnostics giant Roche on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":93892,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[124],"tags":[46946,46947,5799,134],"class_list":["post-93891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-roche","tag-gene-sequencer","tag-hostile-bid","tag-illumina","tag-roche"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/116832527108032454","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93891\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}