Pacific Biosciences of California, Inc. (aka PacBio) is an American
biotechnology company founded in 2004 that develops and manufactures systems for
gene sequencing and some novel real time biological observation.
PacBio describes its platform as
single-molecule real-time sequencing (SMRT), based on the properties of
zero-mode waveguide zero-mode waveguide is an optical waveguide that guides light energy into a volume that is small in all dimensions compared to the wavelength of the light.
Zero-mode waveguides have been developed for rapid parallel sensing of zeptolitre sample vo ...
s.
History
The company was founded based on research done at
Cornell University
Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...
that combined semiconductor processing and
photonics
Photonics is a branch of optics that involves the application of generation, detection, and manipulation of light in form of photons through emission, transmission, modulation, signal processing, switching, amplification, and sensing. Though ...
with biotechnology research.
Three graduate students in the lab of Professors
Watt W. Webb
Watt Wetmore Webb (August 27, 1927 – October 29, 2020) was an American biophysicist, known for his co-invention (with Winfried Denk and Jim Strickler) of multiphoton microscopy in 1990.
Early life and education
Watt Wetmore Webb was born on ...
— Jonas Korlach — and
Harold Craighead — Steve Turner and Mathieu Foquet — became the first employees.
It began under the name Nanofluidics, Inc. The company raised nearly in six rounds of primarily
venture capital financing
Venture capital financing is a type of funding by venture capital. It is private equity capital that can be provided at various stages or funding rounds. Common funding rounds include early-stage seed funding in high-potential, growth companies ...
, making it one of the most capitalized startups in 2010 leading up to their public offering in October of that year. Key investors included Mohr Davidow Ventures,
Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, Alloy Ventures, and
Wellcome Trust
The Wellcome Trust is a charitable foundation focused on health research based in London, in the United Kingdom. It was established in 1936 with legacies from the pharmaceutical magnate Henry Wellcome (founder of one of the predecessors of Glaxo ...
.
The company's first commercial product, the PacBio RS, was sold to a limited set of customers in 2010 and was commercially released in early 2011.
A subsequent version of the sequencer called the PacBio RS II was released in April 2013.
Leadership
In 2004, Kleiner Perkins entrepreneur-in-residence Hugh Martin became CEO. On 6 January 2012 board member Michael Hunkapiller, PhD assumed the role of CEO. Hunkapiller retired in September 2020, and was replaced by chairman of the board Christian Henry. Henry was a former executive VP and chief commercial officer of
Illumina before joining the board at PacBio in July 2018.
Illumina: attempted acquisition
On 1 November 2018,
Illumina, Inc. agreed to purchase PacBio for US$1.2 billion in cash. The deal was expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2019.
In December 2019, the
Federal Trade Commission
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is an independent agency of the United States government whose principal mission is the enforcement of civil (non-criminal) antitrust law and the promotion of consumer protection. The FTC shares jurisdiction ov ...
sued to block the acquisition. The deal was abandoned with an announcement on 2 January 2020. Illumina further agreed to pay Pacific Biosciences a $98 million US termination fee plus previously agreed upon deal extension payments of $22 million US in February and $6 million US in March 2020.
Products
Sequencing instruments
![SequelSequencer](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0f/SequelSequencer.jpg)
The company's first scientific instrument, called the “PacBio RS”, was released to a limited set of eleven customers in late 2010. Sequencing provider
GATC Biotech was selected by Pacific Biosciences as its first European service provider in late 2010. The product was then commercially released in early 2011.
A new version of the sequencer called the "PacBio RS II" was released in April 2013; it produced longer sequence reads and offered higher throughput than the original RS instrument.
The RS instrument will officially be supported until the end of 2021.
In September 2015, the company released a new sequencing instrument, the Sequel System. The sequencer has increased capacity with 1 million zero-mode waveguides compared to 150,000 in the PacBio RS II, and is approximately one-third the size and one-half the price of the PacBio RS II.
Reagents and SMRT Cells
To use either instrument, customers must also purchase reagent packs for DNA preparation and sequencing and small consumables called “SMRT Cells”. Cells for the RS sequencer are slightly less than one-centimeter square and contains tens of thousands of
zero-mode waveguide zero-mode waveguide is an optical waveguide that guides light energy into a volume that is small in all dimensions compared to the wavelength of the light.
Zero-mode waveguides have been developed for rapid parallel sensing of zeptolitre sample vo ...
s.
Software and Applications
Their secondary analysis bioinformatics product for the RS, called “SMRT Analysis”, was
open source
Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...
. For the Sequel system the secondary analysis software was reorganized as the "SMRT Link" application. In 2013, the company released new bioinformatics tools for automated genome assembly (HGAP) and finishing (Quiver).
External links
Company web site
References
{{portal, Companies
Companies listed on the Nasdaq
Companies based in Menlo Park, California
Technology companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area
Biotechnology companies of the United States
Biotechnology companies established in 2004
American companies established in 2004
Genomics companies
Research support companies
Health care companies based in California
2004 establishments in California
2010 initial public offerings