Trends And Innovations In Biotechnology

The NGS data analysis pipeline is getting more robust and efficient for scientists as some biotech companies offer cloud-computing technology. The users can upload the raw FASTQ/ BAM files to the cloud and the variant report will be available almost immediately. These bioinformatics advances have sped up the molecular diagnosis of patients, empowering clinicians to make more accurate and faster therapeutic decisions to bring hope to patients, making precision medicine a reality.

2. How has the advent of latest innovations in biotechnology impacted the industry? In your opinion, how would it reshape the landscape?

The recent advances in next generation sequencing have enabled the industry to understand more about the disease biology and to understand how the cancer evolves during treatment. We know that the more advanced the disease is, the harder to cure as there are many ‘cancer clones’ in the tumor(s). Such important molecular information can guide the clinicians to utilize the most suitable treatment for the patients.

I envision future healthcare will be about early detection. For example, if we can detect circulating tumor DNA from blood early on by robust, ultra-sensitive next generation sequencing, patients can receive the right treatment on time to improve survival. We need to make the cancer diagnostics more accessible and affordable to general public that will need commitment from government, healthcare sectors, insurance, industries, NGOs to make it a reality.

3. Are there any other interesting insights you would like to share with us?

To address the tumor heterogeneity issue, we can now use single-cell sequencing method to understand different ‘cancer clones’ within a tumor. The more we understand the complexity of the cancer, the better the treatment we can offer to the patient. We will need a strong network of researchers, bioinformatics, academia and industries to share data, tools to make these dreams a reality for our patients.