director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) headquartered at UC San Diego, was Illumina itself. The company is a pioneer in DNA-sequencing technology, and increasingly, for analyzing genomic data—that is, the genetic variations and biological functions embedded in the code.
“Their cloud solution for analyzing the human genome is pretty substantial,” Smarr said. “The data requires the kind of analytics that we’re hearing [about] around the table. It didn’t used to. But the volume now is on an exponential [scale]. So you really can’t get any healthcare insights out of the data without these algorithms, particularly in genomics and the microbiome.”
Illumina found customers for its gene sequencing technology and data services at genomic research centers, clinical research organizations, research institutions, and biotech and pharmaceutical companies. But, is that a model that can be replicated? In other words, if there was a business built around analyzing data from the microbiome, say, what would it look like?
Smarr pointed across the table to Rob Knight, who holds joint appointments in pediatrics and computer science at UC San Diego. Knight is director of the UC San Diego Center for Microbiome Innovation and a co-founder of the American Gut Project, an exercise in “citizen science” that has collected over 16,000 stool samples to help scientists better understand the role that microbes play in human health.
“So remember, I’m running that as a non-profit,” Knight said. “I think it’s going to be really difficult, because in general, companies that have been based around selling access to DNA sequences have not done particularly well. I’m thinking of Celera, for example, which switched from that model to diagnostics.”
“What I think we need to do is to somehow move that into real time, and discover how to develop a user interface for the microbiome, so you can tell like that”—Knight snapped his fingers—“whether that piece of bread you just ate is having a positive or negative effect for you.”
One company pursuing a strategy along these lines is Tel Aviv-based Nutrino, which has been developing a mobile app and data platform to help users determine how the food they eat affects their personal biochemistry.
“They’re providing you real-time guidance on the impact of your “foodprint” as they call it, on your glucose behavior,” said Annika Jimenez, senior vice president for data at San Diego’s DexCom (NASDAQ: [[ticker:DXCM]]), which specializes in continuous glucose monitoring technology for managing diabetes.
“It’s like a premium model, but over time they’ll drive to new commercial models targeting enterprises and possibly payers,” Jimenez said.
The key advantage that A.I. provides in healthcare is the ability to extract meaningful insights from exabytes and zettabytes of data—that is, data on a scale far beyond human comprehension.
“That seems to me to be the end goal, longer term,” said Qualcomm Life president Rick Valencia, who seemed skeptical of current strategies in the field for generating revenue. “In the short term, I think the answer to your question is ‘No.’ I just don’t know of anyone at scale who has
