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By Nuala Moran
BioWorld International Correspondent
LONDON - As the race for the $1,000 genome heats up, Oxford NanoLabs Ltd., one of the leading European contenders, raised £10 million (US$19.89 million) in a second private round, enabling the company to develop working prototypes of its nanopore-based DNA sequencing technology.
Gordon Sanghera, CEO, told Bioworld International, "While the markets are in absolute turmoil at the moment, we were fully subscribed. That's down to the fact that the institutional and private investors really believe in the technology."
The company's nanopore technology has the potential to sequence single molecules of DNA directly, avoiding the need for chemical labeling and time-consuming DNA amplification.
As each DNA base is passed through a nanopore, it binds transiently to a site within the pore.
During binding, each base generates a characteristic reduction of the electrical current through the nanopore, allowing for direct recording of the signal and simple data processing.
Sanghera is coy about giving any details of the plans to commercialize the technology, noting that it is "an incredibly competitive space." Nor is he prepared to give a headline figure on how much it might cost to sequence a genome using Oxford NanoLab's equipment.
"It will obviously be an order of magnitude [lower]. With our system you can work with a single molecule of DNA," Sanghera added.
"There is no need for amplification, and no need for labeling - meaning no reagent costs - and you don't need expensive reading systems."
In addition, he said, various protagonists have come up with a range of interpretations of what would constitute a system for analyzing an entire genome at a cost of $1,000, with some, for example, excluding the capital costs of the equipment.
The $1,000 genome target was set by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2002 as the figure at which an individual's genome could be sequenced as part of routine medical care, thus opening the floodgates to personalized medicine.
Sanghera said Oxford NanoLabs will be pushing the NIH, "to define exactly what they mean by the figure."
The NIH said the target still some way off when it announced the award of the latest round of grants aimed at reducing the cost of sequencing in August 2007.
While DNA sequencing costs have fallen 50-fold over the past 10 years, it is still as much as $5 million to sequence 3 billion base pairs, which is equivalent to the amount of DNA found in the human genome.
In fact, the NIH's National Human Genome Research Institute has set the nearer-term goal of lowering the costs of sequencing to $100,000 per genome.
Sanghera claimed no other company working in the field currently has technology that does away with the need for labeling and amplification.
"We have corralled the intellectual property on nanopores, and we have gone out and targeted the leading academic researchers, including those in the U.S," he pointed out.
Oxford NanoLabs was spun out of Oxford University in 2005 with seed funding from IP Group plc, the quoted technology management company. It raised £7.75 million in its first round in 2006.
IP Group followed on in the current round and now holds 19.5 percent of the company. | 
