偷师科技界，基因组学牵手开放系统

    新的增长才刚刚开始。企业增长咨询公司弗若斯特沙利文（Frost & Sullivan）研究发现，全球PCR市场带来的收益比研究的成本多12亿美元，比以PCR技术为基础的诊断成本多40亿美元。

    有几家公司目前仍在努力提升PCR，让它向前迈一大步，从模拟阶段晋升为数字技术，遵循着与科技业类似的发展道路。作为入行多年的IT业投资者，我发现一些众所周知的互操作性科技突破与PCR的演化还有很多相似之处。其中一项创新的数字化PCR技术是科技企业RainDance Technologies首创，我是这家公司的董事。RainDance将自创的系统命名为“雨滴”（RainDrop），因为它能以数字化方式处理生物分子和疾病标示。

    雨滴系统堪称“实验室的蓝牙”，它将复杂的样本提炼为可以操作的信息。对新生代遗传学应用开发者而言，雨滴的吸引力在于，它的开放系统是建立在PCR市场已经进行的数十亿美元化学投资基础上的。

    与RainDance合作的团队都在发掘新疾病及其监控应用方面处于世界领先水平，这倒不会让人意外。这个工序过去是劳动密集型的人力操作过程，如今只需要操作者坐在经过电脑处理的、外形让人误以为是一个小型台式机电脑的精密空间里。雨滴系统处理DNA、RNA或是RNA数据的精确度、灵敏度和速度足以令任何一位科技界的极客都感到自豪。

    比如要将标准的一升容量水瓶分解为2,000亿个容器，这样划分足够让地球上每个人根据容器数量抿20口水。雨滴的dPCR系统就是要处理这些水滴的规模。经过这样的处理，水滴会很小，肉眼无法看见它们，但RainDance公司设计了一种移动这些水滴的方法。这种方法使用的芯片以索尼的蓝光光盘技术（Blu-ray disc）为依托。它们有很小的凹槽，每个样本能操纵多达1,000万个水滴。RainDance将遗传物质与这些水滴隔离开来，这样就能从生物的汪洋大海中搜寻“某种疾病的针”，计算它们的数量。

    研究人员运用这种技术探测高度敏感性的初期癌变、病毒性感染、细菌毒性病原体感染和遗传性疾病。他们使用的筛选方法是凯利•穆利斯博士和诺贝尔奖评委会30年前只有可能当作幻想的方法。水滴产生的数据不仅可以辨识，还有可操作性。它展示了宏伟的愿景，要让液态活检法成为新兴的标准操作，要通过以较少的创伤，尽早确认遗传性疾病和癌症进一步降低医疗成本，还可能淘汰组织切片。

    数字PCR只是数字化医学的一个实例。利用智能化的数据解决重大问题才是科技界竭力奋斗的目标。（财富中文网）

    本文作者比尔•艾瑞克森现为风投公司Mohr Davidow Ventures的普通合伙人。

    译者：若离

    And the new growth is just beginning. Frost and Sullivan research shows the worldwide PCR Market generates in excess of $1.2 billion for research, plus another $4 billion for PCR-based diagnostics.

    A handful of companies continue to move PCR from analog to digital in a big way, following a path similar to the tech industry. As a long time IT investor, I see many other similarities to well-known tech interoperability breakthroughs. One of the novel digital PCR technologies comes from RainDance Technologies (where I am a board member). RainDance calls their system the "RainDrop" due to its ability to digitize biological molecules and disease markers.

    The RainDrop system acts as the "Bluetooth of the Lab," distilling complex specimens into actionable information. For new genetic application developers, the appeal of the RainDrop is that its open system sits on top of billions of dollars of chemistry investments already made in the PCR market.

    Not surprisingly, the company is working with teams at leading world research centers on new disease discovery and monitoring applications. What was once a labor-intensive, manual process requiring people in lab coats today sits in a computationally sophisticated box that could easily be mistaken for a small desktop computer. The RainDrop system processes DNA, RNA or microRNA data with accuracy, sensitivity and speed that would make any geek proud.

    For instance, consider taking your standard one-liter bottle of water and dividing it into 200 billion containers, enough for every person on the planet to take 20 sips. That's the size of the droplets the RainDrop dPCR system is dealing with. The droplets are so small, you can't see them, yet the company has devised a way to move them around using chips based on SONY's Blu-ray disc technology, which has grooves small enough to manipulate up to 10,000,000 droplets per sample. By isolating genetic material into these picodroplets, RainDance is able to find and count "single disease needles" from the biological haystack.

    Researchers are using this technology for highly sensitive and early detection of cancer mutations, viral infections, bacterial pathogen infections, as well as inherited disease screening in ways Dr. Kary Mullis and the Nobel Prize selection team could only dream of 30 years ago. What RainDrop produces is not just discernable data, but actionable data, and it is showing great promise in making liquid biopsies the emerging standard of care, further reducing healthcare costs by identifying inherited diseases and cancer earlier and less invasively, potentially making tissue biopsies a thing of the past.

    Digital PCR is just one example of the digitization of medicine. Applying smart data to solve big problems – what the tech world does best.