XPrize Pulls Plug On $10 Million Genomics Competition 36
sciencehabit writes "The XPrize Foundation has scrapped its high-profile $10 million genomics challenge set for next month after attracting only two competitors to the sequencing contest. The Archon Genomics XPRIZE began with much fanfare 7 years ago with the aim of boosting medical genomics by offering a $10 million award to the first team to sequence 100 human genomes in 10 days for no more than $10,000 each. After complaints about the tight deadline and unclear judging criteria, the foundation revised the rules in October 2011: The objective was to sequence the genomes of 100 centenarians with high accuracy and 98% completeness within 30 days for $1000 or less. Interest was tepid, however, and only two of the eight contenders in the original contest registered by the 31 May deadline — the company Ion Torrent, and George Church's lab at Harvard University."
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The winner will retire, one productive scientist less.
Very few scientists are in it for the money. Many would love $10M to invest in a lab or fund their Nobel dream research. Many scientists love their work. It is like the Iowa farmer who won five million in the lottery. A reporter asked him what he would do with the money. His answer was "I'll probably just keep farming till it is gone."
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Also it'd likely be going to a team, and they would of course need access to a pretty high tech lab to even compete.
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The winner will retire, one productive scientist less.
Very few scientists are in it for the money. Many would love $10M to invest in a lab or fund their Nobel dream research. Many scientists love their work. It is like the Iowa farmer who won five million in the lottery. A reporter asked him what he would do with the money. His answer was "I'll probably just keep farming till it is gone."
Oh, such altruistic scientists. Scientists most definitely are in it for the money. It's called publish or perish. It's just that they don't get to benefit directly from the money, their university does and in return they get to keep their job. But, don't kid yourself, they have bills to pay, kids to send to college and plain old greed, just like everybody else. If that weren't the case, there wouldn't need to be an XPrize to begin with.
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Oh, such altruistic scientists. Scientists most definitely are in it for the money. It's called publish or perish. It's just that they don't get to benefit directly from the money, their university does and in return they get to keep their job. But, don't kid yourself, they have bills to pay, kids to send to college and plain old greed, just like everybody else. If that weren't the case, there wouldn't need to be an XPrize to begin with.
I don't think you understand the difference between "being in it for the money", and "being able to survive while doing it"...
I think the assessment that they aren't in it for the money is completely accurate, but they doesn't negate the fact that they want to continue being in it, and not be in poverty.
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There are actually about a couple dozen companies that could realistically compete, in addition to labs like Church's. (This list [nature.com] includes them, along with some ancillary service companies.) The eight participants mentioned were merely those parties that had announced intent earlier; the rules have been revised and the other six gave up. The fact that it never attracted participants like Illumina, arguably the biggest name in sequencing, shows that the technology just isn't commercially viable enough, even
Cost hasn't been dropping for a long time (Score:5, Informative)
What we realized is that genome sequencing technology is plummeting in cost and increasing in speed independent of our competition. Today, companies can do this for less than $5,000 per genome, in a few days or less - and are moving quickly towards the goals we set for the prize.
If you look at the graphs at https://www.genome.gov/sequencingcosts/ [genome.gov] what it actually shows is that after plummeting faster than Moore's Law for 3 years between 2008 and 2011, the cost has been basically flat for the past year and a half, probably due to lack of competition [blogspot.com].
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What exactly is the market for sequencers and people wanting to know their DNA sequence? It doesn't sound exactly like a mass consumer item, except perhaps those who want to spend some time on Jerry Springer's TV show (or other talk shows that do DNA matches between random boyfriends and the babies of unwed mothers). A lack of competition also seems to be a lack of customers. No doubt there are people who are willing to pay for sequencing at the current price (including several government agencies for va
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The potential market for sequencing is actually quite large, but it's dominated right now by something approaching a monopoly, so the price isn't going to change much until there's a new player on the block.
You are missing my point of a monopsony [wikipedia.org] existing within the marketplace of sequencing right now as well. You even explained why it is a problem right now in your very own post. If anything monopsonies are far worse economically than even monopolies (just look at what Wal-Mart does to its suppliers if you want to see an example of this in the retail market place).
Until that logjam of monopolies and monoponies are broken, there will likely not be any sort of significant price reduction.
Surprisingly, it was
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Citation?
From what I've heard of shotgun DNA sequencing a better analogy would be if you made thousands of copies of an encyclopedia and randomly chopped all of them into fragments from dozens to thousands of characters long, depending on the specific technology used. If you did it to only one copy it would be essentially impossible to reconstruct the original, but with thousands of copies each line will be included in thousands of fragments, allowing you to start with one shard and find other fragments th
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What we realized is that genome sequencing technology is plummeting in cost and increasing in speed independent of our competition. Today, companies can do this for less than $5,000 per genome, in a few days or less - and are moving quickly towards the goals we set for the prize.
If you look at the graphs at https://www.genome.gov/sequencingcosts/ [genome.gov] what it actually shows is that after plummeting faster than Moore's Law for 3 years between 2008 and 2011, the cost has been basically flat for the past year and a half, probably due to lack of competition [blogspot.com].
Or it could be simple supply and demand and the market, so to speak, has reached equilibrium. With cuts in federal research dollars, manufacturers of sequencers can either lower the price of their wares or leave the price alone and not sell any. It's basic econ 101.
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Re:Genetic bomb (nope) (Score:1)
Ok, since two people actually modded this up, I bite. You want to build a genetic weapon that eliminates races because they are poor? Or because you blame them for negative behaviors? No you don't. Because if this was created (which it can't because you seem to tie skin pigment with social ills) the Arab races could use this to do the exact same thing. You see, they believe just like you that they are the decent society and everyone else needs to be groomed away, as you say.
As for the xprize itself, there i
Slashdot brings you last week's news (Score:2)
Surprised? (Score:1)
Cancelled because winning was a possibility? (Score:2)
According to the TFA, the prize was cancelled because advances in technology have enabled teams to actually win. Hmm...
1. Hold contest to motivate scientists to achieve technological leaps
2. Cancel contest when winning is inevitable
3. Profit!
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You forgot the part where only two companies entered. Sure it's a race, but it's not much of one.
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"You forgot the part where only two companies entered. Sure it's a race, but it's not much of one."
Watching the contest in progress would not be a spectator sport. The goal is not a spectacular race. The objective of the XPrize is to achieve a spectacular goal, by providing a financial incentive. For that reason, two contestants is enough to provide a drive to be first. After all, in XPrizes every contestant other than the winner is cannon fodder (contestant who ends up with nothing).
By canceling the prize,
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Sure it's a race, but it's not much of one.
And if either of them 'won', then humanity wins. What's the overhead in running the contest? This makes no sense based on the given excuses.
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sometimes traditional funding works well (Score:2)
Genomics is an incredibly well funded field. This is not like rocketry where the core technology is only used by a few big contractors and government agencies. There are hundreds of very competent small contract research organizations in the US competing for business.
Looking just at the "non-traditional cutting edge hardware" part of genetics, DARPA has a $50M+ program, Living Foundries, that many of the people mentioned in the X-Prize have won grants under.
When you have a situation where even fringe idea