[Elcannibal]

Ion Torrent does not operate in a vaccum, it is only a small part of a very big company also and it is being pulled on all angles, just trying to make up for all the "other"gang's fall out (solid) is not necessaraly helping on critical work... Things are more complex than you think. Life Tech has to jugle with massive usage drops and severe cut backs to meet market's expectation. This isn't a ball game with two teams...

[GRT]

Roche will acquire Illumina; not a question of "if?", but "for how much?". The real losers will be 454 users, but they were losers already, I suppose. And then maybe Illumina users will suffer too, depending on what Roche decide to do with their new toy. Great news for Ion Torrent.

[krobison]

What are the views here on Helicos.. everyone seems to be wrting them off, but they do have the ongoing litigation against Ilumina and have a history of collaboration with Roche...plus lots of things still bubbling away...like their work at Riken, patrice Milos's involvement now at the new Pfizer Centre, the links with Foundation Medicine etc....interestingly, Roche mentioned on yesterdays conference call that they were interested in Single Molecule Sequencing going forward ..and dodged the question about ongoing IP litigation against Ilumina....could it be that either if the acqusition of Ilumina goes ahead or not Roche will buy out Helicos to get accesss to their tSMS IP and the active litigation against Life and Pacbio (and Ilumina ..if they remain independent)?

Helicos is an expensive machine, very low quality & short read lengths. The key advantages were low cost per sample and easy sample prep. Other than being very close geographically and some staff who have Helicos on their resume, I'm unaware of any real links to Foundation. Avoiding commenting on litigation is a routine event.

Only in the somewhat long shot that Helicos wins big in the courts are they worth much --and with appeals that possible victory is a long ways off. Nanopores are where the attention is at for cheap runs & I doubt Helicos has any strong future.

[Elcannibal]

For sure Helicos, market cap of about 11 milions and current stock of...14 cents. I'm sure Helicos is just hanging up on all offers...

[baguaboy]

What are the views here on Helicos.. everyone seems to be wrting them off, but they do have the ongoing litigation against Ilumina and have a history of collaboration with Roche...plus lots of things still bubbling away...like their work at Riken, patrice Milos's involvement now at the new Pfizer Centre, the links with Foundation Medicine etc....interestingly, Roche mentioned on yesterdays conference call that they were interested in Single Molecule Sequencing going forward ..and dodged the question about ongoing IP litigation against Ilumina....could it be that either if the acqusition of Ilumina goes ahead or not Roche will buy out Helicos to get accesss to their tSMS IP and the active litigation against Life and Pacbio (and Ilumina ..if they remain independent)?

[GW_OK]

Interesting article in Forbes with comment from Craig Venter on this.

Seems like Craig Venter does not belive in the future of Illumina.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewh...ing-land-grab/

Has Illumina offended you personally in some way or are you just that much of an Ion fanboy? Maybe you're just out trolling....

The sequencing technology is moving so fast the Illumina technology may become quickly outmoded, said Craig Venter,

Replace Illumina in that sentence with 454, or SOLiD, PacBio, or even your precious Ion Torrent.

Once somebody can kick off a 3rd gen machine that can live up to the hype we can look back at all the current tech and laugh.

So how do you think it could have been done? Seems impossible to me without fundamentally changing the technology. How could you possibly increase throughput 10 or 100x without resorting to something like Rothberg ended up doing?

Roche could have kept Rothberg and/or optioned the new ion tech when it was developed seeing as how the Ion Torrent is the obvious next evolution of the 454.

[ECO]

Interesting article in Forbes with comment from Craig Venter on this.

Seems like Craig Venter does not belive in the future of Illumina.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewh...ing-land-grab/

Heh @ CV....he "doesn't understand" why Roche would do this? Maybe the future growth of ILMN won't be as explosive as it has been through the array market and through Solexa. But Roche doesn't care about the research market. They want the head start into real HTP clinical sequencing...and ILMN has the only technology that can go there IMHO.

*disclaimer: I'm long on ILMN.

[steinmann]

Interesting article in Forbes with comment from Craig Venter on this.

Seems like Craig Venter does not belive in the future of Illumina.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewh...ing-land-grab/

[steinmann]

No. That is my point. Roche was not at that big of a disadvantage.

--
Phillip

So how do you think it could have been done? Seems impossible to me without fundamentally changing the technology. How could you possibly increase throughput 10 or 100x without resorting to something like Rothberg ended up doing?

[Elcannibal]

This even happens intra-muros, when large companies benefit mostly from cutting back. I would be very surprised if Life follows through on the 5500 plans. Decision makers have already looked at the 5500 return on investment, don't expect a youtube commercial on that one... All sailors to the Proton galley...

[pmiguel]

Isnt that like saying: "If Sony had invested more money in the development of the Walkman, Apple would not have been able to take over the market with the Ipod." ?

No. That is my point. Roche was not at that big of a disadvantage.

--
Phillip

[steinmann]

All I am saying is, if Roche had put an amount of money/resources into continued development of the 454 platform to what they are poised to spend on acquiring Illumina, they could have a competitive instrument now. Post Titanium they lost focus. I think they diverted resources to the development of the 454Jr at that critical juncture.

Isnt that like saying: "If Sony had invested more money in the development of the Walkman, Apple would not have been able to take over the market with the Ipod." ?

Maybe they just saw that the technology was going to become obsolete no matter what and decided it would not be worthwhile to further invest in it.

[GW_OK]

All I am saying is, if Roche had put an amount of money/resources into continued development of the 454 platform to what they are poised to spend on acquiring Illumina, they could have a competitive instrument now. Post Titanium they lost focus. I think they diverted resources to the development of the 454Jr at that critical juncture.

+1 to that.
When the roche deal was first announced there was mention in several articles about roche "failing to keep" or "forcing out" jonathan rothberg. I think that was another huge mistake on their part.

[pmiguel]

One thing for sure, is that 454 is not competitive. Maybe there would be some other way to interpret the take over, but if 454 were competitive with Illumina, then why would they need Illumina?

All I am saying is, if Roche had put an amount of money/resources into continued development of the 454 platform to what they are poised to spend on acquiring Illumina, they could have a competitive instrument now. Post Titanium they lost focus. I think they diverted resources to the development of the 454Jr at that critical juncture.

But maybe the sequencing market is too diverse and would benefit from some coalescence.

--
Phillip

[ECO]

There already is a thread.

Or the direct link to the ABI webinar is here.

I tend to be cynical.

Thanks. Can't believe I missed this.

Not to knock LIFE at all, but my hunch is the fact that Joe Beecham (future gen R&D leader) is presenting this in January means it's not going to be productized and launched in summer. I could be wrong though, it happens.