Death of the MicroArray/oaCGH

I just got out of a lecture given by Allen Bale M.D. a researcher and clinician here in the Department of Genetics at Yale....

I have come to the conclusion......

MicroArrays are going bye-bye....

Why? Allen detailed several unique strategies to "Trick" High Throughput(HT) Genome scanners into doing the heavy lifting, or what used to be heavy lifting/expensive lifting of microarray analysis.

How will this beat MicroArrays?

1. No more expression Arrays....Instead you can do reverse transcription and then do HT sequencing.....bp length too small? Just link all the sequence together.....

2. No more cytogenetics and Array CGH. Solexa's machine can churn through these sequences pretty quickly....hell, if nanopore comes through we could technically assess methylation at the SAME time!!!

3. It will beat them on price. When you have hungry lab rats trying to use their governmental grants as cost effectively as possible, they will find a way to "Adapt" their research to using these machines.

Bottom line.....places like Yale are already beating the "business" of MicroArray technology. That's why Illumina bought Solexa....they already see it coming..

The Sherpa Says: If I were an investor, I would steer clear of companies that are ONLY in the MicroArray business.......And if you are in the diagnostic space......beware of SMS, it will completely replace standard diagnostic tests...... Why do a BRCA sequence when you can just look at the mutations in a SMS run???? For 6000 Myriad will do all the HNPCC genes.....it costs 12 USD to run them through a sequencer.....you do the math......and the DTC genomics companies are already lining up with NextGen......