Oxford Nanopore Technolo... Share Discussion Threads

[74tom] 06/9/2023 07:34

Yes the Odey crash was absolutely typical, shares had just broken the 200DMA and were cruising higher and then that happens! Possibly agree on those loose shares still being the source of selling, but surely it's so short sighted?

Now down 3.5% on £137k, it's comical.

[bamboo2] 06/9/2023 07:29

I concur!

We have had a series of unfortunate events happen to our significant holders over the past two years. The latest was Odey earlier this year. His cash raising exercise meant firesale prices around 210 ish for large buyers.

Imo, It is probably these shares feeding the market at the moment.

[74tom] 06/9/2023 07:22

Cheers Bamboo2.

I suspect today will once again prove why ONT shouldn't be listed on the UK market. £80k of shares traded in the first 20 minutes... Just watch the volume increase come 12 noon when the US wakes up.

I think the CMD in October is their final attempt at drumming up interest from the city. If it fails to attract any II buyers / an increase in volumes then a dual listing will follow in the new year.

Trading at half the valuation of their main competitor is absurd given the strategic progress, innovation & hundreds of potential revenue streams going forwards...

[bamboo2] 06/9/2023 07:12

Strategic collaborations and programmes that access and develop new growth markets, in stated target areas of human genetics, cancer and infectious disease

-- Collaborations for clinical and applied markets: New strategic collaborations to optimise the Group's impact in emerging health and industrial applied markets, including: bioMérieux to develop innovative infectious disease diagnostics, 4bases in human and cancer genetics and Pathoquest to advance biological therapeutics.

-- Large scale UK psychiatric research programme: Announced 22,000 sample cohort study led by the UK National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) BioResource to further research in the initial areas of psychiatric, common and rare disease.

-- German programme for rare disease : Announced research collaboration agreement with "lonGER the 'Clinical Long-read Genome Initiative' a new national German programme developed to evaluate the clinical and research applications of comprehensive nanopore-based sequencing to advance the understanding of rare disease.

-- Large scale US neurodegeneration research programme: National Institutes of Health (NIH) Center for Alzheimer's and Related Dementias (CARD) published an end-to-end pipeline using Oxford Nanopore technology that produces state-of-the-art single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP), structural variant and methylation calls, while being cost-effective and scalable for large projects.

-- Pathogen sequencing in ICU improves outcomes: Guy's and St Thomas' hospital published evidence of respiratory metagenomics workflow using Oxford Nanopore resulting in improved patient outcomes. Project scaleup continues.

-- Stanford shows methylation helps monitor cancer: A Stanford University team published a nanopore-based method for characterising cell-free DNA methylomes, highlighting the future potential of applying this method for longitudinal monitoring of cancer during treatment.

Investment in operations and people to support growth strategy

-- Improving global distribution for faster and easier product delivery: Agreement signed with UPS to drive rapid and easy global logistics and ease of delivery for broad customer base, with specific impact in North America and Asia Pacific. Flow cells will be stored in UPS Healthcare's high tech distribution facility in Singapore for the first time and be delivered within 24 to 48 hours through UPS's distribution capabilities to destinations across Asia Pacific.

-- Expansion of teams to optimise commercial traction: Global Commercial headcount increased to 346 at 30 June 2023.

-- Board expansion reflects Pharma/Biotech potential: Kate Priestman appointed as Non-Executive Director, adding extensive experience as a biopharma executive, serving in leadership roles across commercial, operations, corporate strategy, communications, and government affairs.

[bamboo2] 06/9/2023 07:09

Hi Tom, I'm still wading through it! Just posting some key points as the bb then becomes a searchable database when using the 'search this thread function'.

============================================

H1 Key strategic and operational highlights

Continued innovation to strengthen our unique market position

-- Q20+ chemistry roll-out nearing completion with a large proportion of all new orders placed being for the upgraded flow cells and kits. The Q20+ chemistry generates single molecule accuracy of 99% and is delivering highly accurate variant and methylation detection at unparalleled scale with no additional capital investment necessary by our customers, further strengthening our market position.

-- Acceleration and simplification of sequencing analysis pipelines with the latest software release enabling Q20+ data to be generated and basecalled in real time, including methylation, on the A-series PromethION(R) compute. The A-series compute upgrade is highly sought after by high-throughput users as they continue to scale nanopore-based projects. With all basecalling, 5mC, 5hmC and other modifications fully analysed on the sequencer, customers workflows are simple and easy to scale.

-- Democratising access to large genomes, transcriptomes and other high output applications with the PromethION 2 (P2) product range launch underway. A diverse range of customers have purchased the P2 Solo, there are now hundreds of P2 Solos in the field in over 45 countries, with potential to expand the high-output market to substantially more users. Users can plug these highly accessible devices into their GridION (R) or a stand-alone compute. The fully integrated P2(i) is with developers before broader early access launch later in 2023.

-- Driving the highest accuracy: Early access of High Duplex flow cells is underway with key users, as they explore nanopore Q30 (99.9%) single molecule accuracy for the most demanding use cases, such as 'Telomere-to-Telomere' genomes, metagenomic assemblies or strand specific methylation.

[74tom] 06/9/2023 06:50

So much to absorb in that update, from a really simplistic standpoint;

EV / Sales ratio now ~8x (was 20x at IPO price of £4.25 vs £133m revenue in FY21)

Pacbio sits at ~15x ($2.8b EV vs $188m sales)

I'd expect some strong buying from the US this afternoon

[bamboo2] 06/9/2023 06:49

H1 Financial highlights

-- LSRT revenue increased by 22% to GBP86 million, primarily driven by new customer acquisition, partially offset by a GBP9.9 million headwind from COVID sequencing, as expected and previously guided to.

-- Underlying LSRT revenue growth up 46% on a constant currency basis.
-- LSRT growth in all regions; led by the Americas with revenue up 41% on a reported basis and 72% on an underlying basis.

-- Strong underlying growth across all LSRT customers (S1, S2, S3, indirect) up 36%, 61%, 53% and 61% respectively.

-- LSRT gross margin increased by 280 bps to 57.6%, predominantly driven by improvements in manufacturing efficiency, partially offset by one off costs associated with excess COVID sequencing kit write offs and investment in compute upgrades.

-- Total revenue and gross margin decline of 29.7% and 610 basis points respectively, reflects, as expected and previously announced, the conclusion of the Group's legacy Covid testing contract with the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) in 2022.

-- Adjusted EBITDA loss of GBP(39.4) million (H1 22: GBP(34.6) million); higher LSRT gross profit offset by increased operating expenses, reflecting investment in commercial and marketing teams, to support long term sustainable growth.

-- Increase in loss year-on-year to GBP(70.1) million (H1 22: GBP(30.2) million). The result for H1 22 included the income from the conclusion of the Group's Covid testing contract with the DHSC as described above, a net benefit of GBP37.9 million.

-- Cash, cash equivalents and other liquid investments of GBP484.6 million[1], compared to GBP558.0 million as of 31 December 2022

[bamboo2] 06/9/2023 06:31

06 September 2023

Oxford Nanopore Technologies plc

Interim results for the six months ended 30 June 2023

- Underlying(1) Life Science Research Tools (LSRT) revenue up 53% or 46% on a constant currency basis driven by high quality, recurring consumables revenue and new customer acquisition

- LSRT gross margin up 280 basis points driven by improvements to flow cell margins from optimised manufacturing techniques and efficiency

- Continued investment in innovation and commercial infrastructure drives increased use of our technology by existing and new customers, further strengthening market position

Oxford Nanopore Technologies plc (LSE: ONT) ("Oxford Nanopore" or the "Group"), the company behind a new generation of molecular sensing technology based on nanopores , today announces its interim results for the six months ended 30 June 2023.

Gordon Sanghera, Chief Executive Officer, commented:

"We delivered strong performance in the first half, with underlying Life Science Research Tools revenue up 46% on a constant currency basis, as more researchers harnessed our sequencing technology to help find solutions to some of the planet's most pressing problems. We have invested significantly in innovative new products and platform enhancements, so that customers can benefit from richer, faster and more accessible data wherever they need it. We have also launched important new partnerships and collaborations aimed at opening opportunities in clinical and applied sequencing markets."

[bamboo2] 05/9/2023 17:13

Plain English article from Eureka Alert on Daniel Kims Lab in the US.

This is streets ahead of Illumina's Grail.

Cancer is most treatable in its early stages, so finding innovative and non-invasive methods to diagnose cancer early on is crucial for fighting the disease. Liquid biopsies, which require just a simple blood draw, are an emerging technology for non-invasively testing for cancer using DNA or RNA sequencing of a patient’s blood.

[brucie5] 04/9/2023 08:18

Handle starting?

[bamboo2] 02/9/2023 18:26

Great to see established sequencing companies moving over to embrace Nanopore as well as Illumina. Likely that diagnostics will become a much larger part of the ONT business over the next twelve months.

Whole Genome Sequencing Services
Our cornerstone service, sequencing isolates from around the world!

[brucie5] 01/9/2023 16:39

Keep up the good work, Bamboo. I don't post much here as currently not holding, but do read.
;)

[bamboo2] 01/9/2023 16:36

New liquid biopsy technology uses RNA "dark matter" to detect cancer


Reviewed by Lily Ramsey, Aug 31 2023



Cancer is most treatable in its early stages, so finding innovative and non-invasive methods to diagnose cancer early on is crucial for fighting the disease. Liquid biopsies, which require just a simple blood draw, are an emerging technology for non-invasively testing for cancer using DNA or RNA sequencing of a patient's blood.

Assistant Professor of Biomolecular Engineering Daniel Kim and his lab are developing more accurate and powerful liquid biopsy technologies that take advantage of signals from RNA "dark matter," an understudied area of the genome. Kim's new research shows that this genetic material is present in the blood of people with cancer and can be identified to diagnose specific cancer types such as pancreatic, lung, esophageal, and others early in the course of the disease.

Kim's lab developed an RNA liquid biopsy platform that detects both protein-coding RNA and RNA dark matter in the blood, and showed that this new approach significantly improves the performance of liquid biopsy for cancer diagnosis. This research was published today in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering.

Focus on 'dark matter'
While most researchers and companies are pursuing DNA-based liquid biopsy for cancer diagnosis, Kim's approach is unique in its focus on RNA "dark matter," specifically noncoding and repetitive RNA.

Most of the three billion base pairs of DNA that make up the human genome are transcribed into RNA, and all of the RNA is collectively known as the transcriptome. The most commonly recognized function of RNA is to code for proteins in the body, but 75% of the human genome generates noncoding RNA that does not code for proteins.

A substantial portion of these noncoding RNAs are derived from repetitive elements, and these RNAs can travel out of the cell from which they originate and into the bloodstream. A healthy individual's blood typically would have very few of these repetitive noncoding RNAs. However, Kim's research has shown that even at the earliest stages of cancer, many of these repetitive RNAs are secreted out of cancer cells, making them potent biomarkers of early-stage disease.

RNA liquid biopsy technology developed by the Kim lab aims to detect cancer by sequencing "cell-free RNA" in a patient's blood to test for the presence of both protein-coding and repetitive noncoding RNA.

Kim's lab created a cell-free RNA sequencing and analysis platform called COMPLETE-seq to identify repetitive noncoding RNAs that are typically overlooked. After a patient's blood is drawn, this comprehensive approach analyzes the sample for all of the annotated areas of the transcriptome -; the tens of thousands of RNAs that have already been well-documented-; plus all of the five million noncoding repetitive elements that Kim's lab also focuses on.

If you look at these different cancers, each has its own characteristic cell-free RNA profile, but a lot of these RNAs are coming from the millions of repeat elements that are found throughout the genome. What we found was that when we trained machine learning models for cancer classification, the models perform better when you introduce these repetitive cell-free RNAs as additional features. We see higher sensitivity in terms of detecting cancer, so we think that these repeat elements are actually providing a lot of rich cell-free RNA information that people previously hadn't looked for."

Daniel Kim, Assistant Professor of Biomolecular Engineering

Improving tests
Other existing liquid biopsy tests have not been very sensitive for early stage cancer, with some tests missing up to 75% of stage I cancers, when the biological signal is low due to the small tumor size. Kim's paper shows that incorporating repetitive RNA into their liquid biopsy platform greatly increases the biological signal and boosts the performance of machine learning models tasked to identify cancer. As an example, using COMPLETE-seq improved performance to 91% sensitivity for identifying colorectal cancer.

"The value of our study is that we've now shown the potential of these repeat elements for diagnosing disease, so hopefully there'll be a lot of interest in leveraging repetitive RNAs to boost the sensitivity of these multi-cancer early detection tests," Kim said.

The research findings show that this technology can be used to identify a variety of cancer types. The lab initially focused on pancreatic cancer for this study, as there is an urgent clinical need for pancreatic cancer early detection, as late detection leads to worse outcomes for patients. Pancreatic cancer is also known to be driven by mutations in the KRAS gene, which is also a focus of Kim's lab.

After verifying findings in pancreatic cancer, the researchers also looked at a variety of other cancers, and plan to look at many more cancer types with additional samples across the progressive stages of cancer. The team is interested in collaborating with clinicians and companies to do this.

Kim's goal is to develop an RNA liquid biopsy test for multi-cancer early detection, using the rich information from repetitive RNAs to identify and diagnose disease with high sensitivity and specificity. Kim hopes his platform will not only diagnose cancer at the earliest stages but also help guide individualized, precise treatment strategies when the cancer is more treatable. Moreover, his test could help to identify a recurrence of cancer, and also be used to study aging and to diagnose other types of diseases that alter the repetitive RNA landscape, such as Alzheimer's disease. He recently gave the UCSC Kraw Lecture on "Precision Health for All Through RNA" that laid out his vision for early detection and precise treatment of disease using RNA.

The researchers also used nanopore sequencing to read the cell-free RNAs floating in the blood, which allowed them to generate long-reads and determine the true length of these cell-free RNAs. Kim believes his lab is the first to use nanopore sequencing, a technique pioneered at UC Santa Cruz, for RNA liquid biopsies to diagnose cancer and to determine the full length of these cell-free RNAs. Nanopore sequencing can be performed on a handheld device developed by Oxford Nanopore Technologies called the MinION. This holds promise for carrying out cancer screening in remote or resource-poor settings where larger, more expensive sequencers are not readily available.

"This study would not have been possible without the strong support of the American Cancer Society and all of its generous donors, leadership, staff, and volunteers, as well as all of the hard work of my PhD student Roman Reggiardo (an NIH F99/K00 Fellow now at HHMI Investigator Howard Chang's lab at Stanford University) and all of our Kim lab members and collaborators," Kim said.

In addition to his role as an Assistant Professor in the Baskin School of Engineering associated with the Institute for the Biology of Stem Cells, the Genomics Institute, and the Center for Molecular Biology of RNA at UC Santa Cruz, Kim is also an Associate Member of the Canary Center at Stanford for Cancer Early Detection and a Research Scholar of the American Cancer Society.

[bamboo2] 31/8/2023 10:40

Small excerpt from recent article...
[If link not working search title on google for complete text.]

Superbugs: why it’s so hard to stop the ‘silent pandemic’



...clinicians who are aware of the problem, and want to give antibiotics in a more targeted way, struggle because of a lack of diagnostics — tests that can identify precisely what the pathogen is. They tend to rely on so-called broad spectrum antibiotics, which should be able to tackle a range of bacteria, but have the serious side effect of building resistance even in bacteria they are not targeting.

At London’s St Thomas’s hospital, on the banks of the river Thames, microbiologists are trialing a new approach to speed up diagnosis and alert doctors to when their patient has bacteria that may be resistant to an antibiotic.

Instead of waiting three to five days for scientists to grow the bacteria in a Petri dish and examine it under a microscope, they are using a genomic sequencer developed by Oxford Nanopore. The size of a printer, it can give its first view on what the pathogen is within half an hour, and a full report in two hours.

Previously the reports from the microscope observations had been “close to being completely unhelpful”, says Jonathan Edgeworth, a consultant microbiologist at St Thomas’s and the vice-president of medical affairs at Nanopore. They were viewed by doctors as a public health tool to track disease, not diagnose it. Now, they can use the sequencer to select the right treatment, and eventually, the data could also point drugmakers to which resistant pathogens to target and how.

Ian Abbs, chief executive of the hospital’s trust, says they have already seen an impact in intensive care patients, where the potential financial savings of treating patients more quickly are significant. “Each day costs about £2,500, depending on the complexity of the patient. For my sickest patients, it could be £10,000,” he says. The scheme is being expanded to five other hospitals and Abbs hopes to quickly spread it across the NHS...

[bamboo2] 25/8/2023 17:03

25 August 2023

Oxford Nanopore Technologies plc

Notice of Results and Capital Markets Day

Oxford Nanopore Technologies plc (LSE: ONT) ("Oxford Nanopore" or the "Group"), the company behind a new generation of molecular sensing technology based on nanopores, will announce its interim results for the six months ended 30 June 2023, on Wednesday 6 September 2023.

Management will host a virtual presentation on the same day, at 12:00pm BST/ 7:00am EDT , followed by a Q&A session, accessible via conference call or webcast. To access the webcast please register via this link.

The webcast will also be available on Oxford Nanopore's website at

The same link will provide access to a replay of the webcast shortly after the event concludes.

Alternatively, please contact [e-mail] for details of the conference call.

Details of the Capital Markets Day - 19th October 2023

Oxford Nanopore will be hosting a Capital Markets Day for institutional investors and sell-side analysts on Thursday, 19 October 2023 from 12:00pm. The event will be held at The Science Museum, Exhibition Rd, South Kensington, London SW7 2DD.

The event will include presentations and Q&A sessions from Oxford Nanopore's Executive Leadership Team, product demonstrations and a customer panel.

Places are limited so if you would like to attend in-person please contact [e-mail] . The event will also be webcast live .

[bamboo2] 25/8/2023 07:38

Not possible without ONT gear. This is a layman accessible article.
=====================================================================

Researchers have just completed the first full sequence of a Y chromosome — what will we learn?

August 23, 2023

By Rose Miyatsu

The Telomere-to-Telomere (T2T) consortium, co-led by UC Santa Cruz Genomics Institute Associate Director Karen Miga and National Institutes of Health Genomics Research Institute Senior Investigator Adam Phillippy, has just completed the first sequencing of a full human Y chromosome!

The Y chromosome is one of the smallest of the 46 human chromosomes, but it has been the most difficult for researchers to read. Until recently, more than half of it was unassembled. Having the full code for this unique chromosome could help unlock at least a few of its many mysteries.

Here are ten questions about the Y chromosome, and the answers we have so far:



Basic article...

Scientists release the first complete sequence of a human Y chromosome
August 23, 2023

By Emily Cerf

[bamboo2] 23/8/2023 07:54

Oxford Nanopore Technologies and IQVIA collaborate to improve global health outcomes by driving access to nanopore sequencing
Tue 22nd August 2023


New collaboration aims to broaden access to nanopore sequencing technology to accelerate patient diagnosis and genomic research

Oxford Nanopore Technologies plc (Oxford Nanopore), the company delivering a new generation of nanopore-based molecular sensing technology, and IQVIA, a leading global provider of advanced analytics, technology solutions and clinical research services in healthcare and life sciences, has announced a new collaboration that aims to improve global health outcomes by driving access to cutting-edge nanopore sequencing technology, accelerating patient diagnosis and genomic research.

The collaboration would allow IQVIA to bring nanopore sequencing into its global laboratory network to drive advances in both research and diagnostic applications, increasing the pool of available genomic data to advance new discoveries and inform clinical care decisions. It would also build global expertise within nanopore-based sequencing, a novel sensing technology that can read any-length DNA and RNA fragments and produce real-time, scalable analysis to support genomic research and rapid and cost-effective disease characterization of clinical samples.

The collaboration will kick off with proof-of-concept projects in Europe, Middle East, Africa and India, starting with an initial pilot in Romania.

IQVIA’s broad network of international, expert laboratory operations across more than 100 countries would support Oxford Nanopore’s mission to increase access amongst broad scientific and clinical communities, ensuring nanopore sequencing can be rapidly rolled out where it will have the most impact.

Gordon Sanghera, CEO, Oxford Nanopore Technologies, commented:

“We are excited to collaborate with IQVIA to drive access to nanopore sequencing and improve global health outcomes by accelerating advances in biomedical research and diagnostic applications. By tapping into IQVIA’s formidable global laboratory network, we will be able to significantly expand the reach of our technology and further support our vision to enable the analysis of anything, anywhere.”

[bamboo2] 13/8/2023 19:27

Selective sequencing on a shoestring: the $300 HARU system
July 4, 2023

[In laymans terms!]

This week in GigaScience, Hasindu Gamaarachchi and colleagues published a paper on their HARU solution for selective sequencing, to be used alongside the handheld (“tricorder” like) Nanopore MinION device.

[parob] 09/8/2023 07:30

This is looking good. Let's hope we can push through 280p once we get there.

[bamboo2] 07/8/2023 19:54

From a chart pattern pov, the first target after 300 is approx. 340

We have share price rising above rising 200 and 50 smas, with an imminent true golden cross.

Fundamentally, we need to have sight of machine x, and positive clinical trial results to see wider adoption, which will provide the income to justify higher share prices.

The company is still hiring.

[brucie5] 07/8/2023 13:22

Short answer has to be: all the way back up! Particularly if they can keep on raising their revenues by 30%+ to reach BE by 2026.
(Have I got that right, Bamboo?)
Have to be careful what I say on this board - there are experts and there are experts! I merely a willing passenger at this stage.
;)

[parob] 07/8/2023 10:34

Out of interest where do you see this going if we can break through 300p from a technical perspective Brucie?

[parob] 07/8/2023 08:01

Yes agree 300 key level, and thought 280 would be too. Price currently trying to break out of handle from cup & handle formation.

[bamboo2] 07/8/2023 06:39

New hardware and software upgrades announced at NCM London in May 2023 finding their way to users. Some excellent reports of speed and accuracy improvements on Twitter.

[brucie5] 06/8/2023 08:45

Technically, it's all about the £3 level. Until then, largely noise.