Bill Ericson doesn’t see much cause for pessimism about the dawning Genomic Age. The Mohr Davidow Ventures partner, who’s helped resuscitate the firm’s life-science practice since he came aboard in 2000, believes the widespread dissemination of genetic information will be a virtually unalloyed good, opening up a wealth of opportunities for more effective medicine, lower healthcare costs and individual empowerment — not to mention investment opportunities for those prescient enough to seize them. (See here and here for my own take on the subject.)
Ericson, of course, has plunked down some serious cash in service of his convictions.. He played a significant role in funding the genome-sequencing startup Pacific Biosciences, which announced itself with a splash last weekend, and previously backed Tethys Bioscience, a biotech with a test it says will predict your diabetes risk with high precision. I spoke with him recently about the PacBio investment, and somewhat to my surprise soon found myself in a broader conversation about the impact genomic data will have on the world. (I’ve edited the transcript for clarity and brevity.)
VentureBeat Life Sciences: Makers of biological tools like gene-sequencing equipment have been out of favor with VCs for almost a decade. How did you get involved with a genome sequencer like PacBio?
Bill Ericson: Back in the mid-1990s, it became clear that we were entering a period in which we could measure biological functions and patterns in ways that we hadn’t previously been able to do. When I joined Mohr Davidow, I wanted to focus on where measuring biology in more systematic, quantitative ways would lead. It was just the beginning of a period of rapid technological advances and of rapidly improving understanding of fundamental biology. I was convinced that all sorts of goods and services would flow out of that.
One area we considered greatly underinvested was sequencing. Other nucleic-acid measurement techniques are surrogates for sequence information, which we thought was the gold standard. At the end of the day, if you could do fast, accurate sequencing, you’d probably end up dominating the field.
One technology that got us really excited was at a company then called Nanofluidics [now PacBio], where three Cornell postdocs were working on zero-mode waveguides and using them to do sequencing. We convinced them to move their group to the Palo Alto area, where they incubated with us for the better part of a year. We wanted to invest in people and technology that could really take you to the next, next level of sequencing — as close as possible to the end state of sequencing technology. These guys had at least the theoretical ability to do the full human genome for $1,000 or less.
VBLS: What consequences do you expect from the advent of such high-speed sequencing?
BE: This is an information-generating technology, one that’s faster, cheaper and more powerful than anything else. Any number of new applications could flow from that. For instance, everyone believes that genetics plays a role in predisposing you to various diseases. If we do the population studies [that reliably link genetic differences to disease], you can arm physicians, patients and consumers with a better way of looking at health. Human health turns into much more of an information system that can be understood and proactively addressed, in sharp contrast to medical practice today, which is tremendously reactive and wasteful.
Once you shine the spotlight of sequencing on large populations, you’ll identify patterns that are invisible today. I would love to see genetic studies show that only five percent of the population actually needs to go on a drug that today is prescribed for 40 percent to 50 percent. That’s a tremendous win — no drug has no side effects. Sequencing could also be very useful in an area that frankly ought to scare all of us to death, which is the emergence of drug-resistant infectious disease. You could see the mutations [that confer resistance] happening in real time. In real time, you could be measuring somatic mutations [that give rise to cancer].
I think all these tools are going to give rise to new applications. It’s a lot like watching the computer industry — once PCs were adopted to the point of being cheap and readily available, people created applications for them. I honestly wish I could tell you precisely what will be valuable and what won’t, but we’re still in the early innings.
(More after the jump.)