BioNano Genomics gets $10 million

BioNano Genomics has received $10 million to help roll out its Irys system for human genome analysis. Current investors, Battelle Ventures, Domain Associates and Gund Investment Corp. participated in financing the San Diego-based company.

The Irys system reads structural genomic information from longer stretches of DNA at a time than other systems, said Erik Holmlin, BioNano's president and CEO. This increased length gives more detail about the location of various elements that regulate genetic activity. The financing was announced Wednesday.

The Irys DNA reading device, made by BioNano Genomics.— BioNano Genomics

BioNano Genomics has built up its ability to read long DNA stretches in various organisms, then recently moved up to reading human genomes, Holmlin said.

Genome sequences are compiled by chopping DNA into thousands of short fragments, reading each fragment, then stitching them together in a computer. However, there's a lot more to DNA function that just the four letters of the genetic code, Holmlin said. Structural variation in the molecule affects how genes act, and that variation isn't captured in a straight readout of the letters.

The Irys system can read stretches of DNA as long as 1 million bases, or DNA letters, the company said. Other genomics companies say their systems can read several hundred letters to a few thousand on average.

Holmlin said BioNano's system doesn't compete with these others, because they focus on getting the exact sequence of DNA letters, while BioNano focuses on larger-scale properties that affect how the sequence works.

Genes make up just a few percent of DNA. While much of the remainder performs no apparent function, researchers are continually discovering more extragenetic properties of DNA that affect gene function. Holmlin said the Irys system is well-suited to explore these properties.

Erik Holmlin, president and CEO of BioNano Genomics.— BioNano Genomics

"A genome is a lot more than a collection of genes," Holmlin said. "There are regulatory elements, there are genes, there are reading frames. And whether a gene is in front of a regulatory element or behind a regulatory element has profound biological significance."

The extent to which DNA structure modifies how genes work isn't yet clear, he said. But there's growing evidence that it has clinical significance. For example, in methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, that bacterium's genome has added an element that increases its antibiotic resistance.

"The challenge in finding these is that it takes millions of dollars to find structural variation in a single sample, and that makes it impossible to do these studies on a large population basis," Holmlin said. That means the next MRSA might escape detection until it has becomes widespread. By reducing the cost of analyzing genome structure, routine analysis of patient samples becomes feasible.

The Irys system sells for a list price of $295,000 in North America and Europe.

"BioNano Genomics has made significant progress in commercializing the Irys System first in the U.S. and then in China and Europe, to expand the global access to the power of its long-read capabilities," Tracy Warren, general partner of Battelle Ventures, said in a statement. "We continue our support of BioNano so that scientists and clinicians will have better tools to investigate the clinical significance of genome variation."


