684
tests had received $600 million in grants and tax credits under Qualifying
Therapeutic Discovery Project (QTDP) in the US. They were among almost 3,000
small biotech companies who received a total of $1 billion under the QTDP pro-
gram. In 2011, Illumina lowered the cost of its human WGS services to $5,000 per
genome for projects of 10 samples or more, and $4,000 for projects of 50 samples
or more. The services were offered through the Illumina Genome Network and
competed directly with human whole-genome offerings from Complete Genomics
and Life Technologies.
In 2012, Life Technologies’ Benchtop Ion Proton™ Sequencer could decode a
human genome in 1 day for $1,000. A graph of the drop of cost of sequencing per
genome at the NHGRI Genome Sequencing Program is shown in Fig. 23.1.
Cost of Genotyping
Currently, it typically costs a drug company about $1 billion to develop, test, and
bring to market a single drug. Pharmacogenomic data could hasten clinical drug
trials, allowing researchers to design and conduct safer, more targeted trials on a
Fig. 23.1 Cost of sequencing per genome (DNA sequencing costs: data from the NHGRI Genome
Sequencing Program. http://www.genome.gov/sequencingcosts (accessed on 8 Jan 2015))
23 Economics of Personalized Medicine