NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) — UK-based start-up Base4 Innovation has become the first competitor from outside the US to participate in the Archon X Prize for Genomics, the X Prize Foundation said today.
The company is developing a new DNA sequencing method that combines “techniques such as photon detection and fluorescent labeling with nanostructures and cutting-edge methods of nanofabrication,” according to the foundation.
Four other teams have entered the race, which will pay $10 million to the first team to sequence 100 human genomes in 10 days for less than $10,000 per genome. The teams are VisiGen Biotechnologies, 454 Life Sciences, the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution, and Reveo.
"This is an enormous, yet attainable challenge,” X Prize senior director Marc Hodosh said in a statement. “Such new technology will help mankind better understand disease while advancing proactive and preventative healthcare.”
Base4 is supported by the University of Warwick and Warwick Ventures, and includes a group of physicists and biologists from Oxford, Cambridge, and Warwick Universities, the foundation said.