China Becoming a Leader in Asia’s Genomic Market

With support from the government, Chinese companies are beginning to invest billions of dollars into genetics research. Apart from that, they are also funding new companies locally and abroad. Following China’s footsteps, their other Asian contemporaries are also making efforts I this regard, but on a smaller scale. As the advancements in genomics are beginning to unveil the ways in which human organisms interact with their environment, a big number of Asian players want to get in.

In the year 1999, China just had one company that specialized in genomics. Today, China has 15 such companies that specialize in the field of genomics. Among that lot, two of the biggest names are Annoroad and BGI.

BGI was established in the year 1999, by two Chinese researchers. These researchers managed to persuade the leaders of the Human Genome Project, to allow them to handle 1% of their work. This enabled China to become a major contributor in this massive research-based project. Soon, they surprised the entire world by publishing the genetic sequence of the Rice Plant. Furthermore, they even managed to decode the DNA of the giant panda.

Since, then BGI has managed to expand and grow in a very major way. Some years back, they invested in a genomics based test, which used maternal blood see whether or not the fetus had chromosomal abnormalities. BGI claims that 1 million of the testing kits were sold in the year 2016. The demand for this technology increased because of china’s shift from one-child policy to two-child policy. Now, BGI handles more than half of parental screening in china, which is ahead of what their competitors are capable of doing.

In China, another genomics firm called Annoroad has also emerged among the big market players. In the year 2015, Annoroad teamed up with US based company Illumina, to provide advanced sequencing technology to the Chinese reproductive health market. In November 2017, Annoroad raised around $105 million in a new funding.

In the city of Shanghai, a new company named Wuxi Nextcode is also emerging on the Chinese genomics scene, and also growing at a rapid pace. Wuxi changed its name to Wuxi Nextcode, after it acquired an Icelandic company Nextcode in 2015. Wuxi Nextcode has been growing at a speedy pace, and managed to establish its offices, not only in Shanghai and Iceland, but in the US as well.