Complete Genomics Loses Staff, Delays Revolocity as BGI Seeks Support for BGISEQ-500

By Bio-IT World Staff

November 24, 2015 | Complete Genomics of Mountain View, Calif., is undergoing a big shakeup under the direction of its Shenzhen-based owner BGI, Julia Karow reports at GenomeWeb. The company, once the largest sequencing-as-a-service provider in the U.S., will lay off what Karow reports is a “substantial” number of employees and refocus its R&D efforts in support of BGI’s new BGISEQ-500 sequencer, revealed last month at the International Conference on Genomics.

The reorganization comes at a surprising time, as Complete Genomics was in the midst of its own product launch, of the ultra-high-throughput Revolocity sequencing system. Three customers, pursuing large-scale whole genome sequencing for patient care, had announced their purchases of the system, at a price of $12 million each. Complete Genomics was preparing to install these Revolocity systems, each a miniature sequencing factory unto itself, in early 2016.

Now these installations will be delayed, and there is no indication of when or if the contracts can be honored.

As recently as one month ago, Complete Genomics CEO Cliff Reid spoke to Bio-IT World about his plans for Revolocity, and the efforts his company had gone through to reinvent itself as a commercial manufacturer. “What [BGI] needed from us was to be a packaged product supplier,” Reid said at the time, referring to his pivot away from sequencing-as-a-service after his company’s acquisition in 2013. “So it accelerated our move from a pure services business to being able to distribute our technology globally, and it caused us to go through some major packaging processes.”

Reid will now be resigning as CEO, although he will stay at Complete Genomics at least temporarily to direct the company.

It is unclear whether there were problems with the rollout of Revolocity, or whether BGI has simply decided to deemphasize the system as a matter of corporate strategy. Until this news broke, it seemed that BGI was pursuing two avenues concurrently with Complete Genomics: introducing Revolocity globally as a clinical sequencing powerhouse, while retooling Complete Genomics’ technology for the smaller, more flexible BGISEQ-500 at home in China.

Complete Genomics is not speaking with the press, but has released a statement noting that it is forming “a joint research site” with BGI in Mountain View, which “will focus on advanced clinical research.” This site will design assays to run on the BGISEQ-500, with particular emphasis on non-invasive prenatal testing, a type of testing for fetal disorders that has found a huge market in China.

“These decisions result in a significant reduction in staffing at Complete Genomics,” the statement continues.