Pacific Biosciences of California Inc (PACB)

[Paulieme]

The Multi-Platform Approach to Clinical Sequencing with Bobby Sebra, Icahn School Submitted by Ayanna Monteverdi on Mon, 06/15/2015 -


Bobby Sebra, Director of Technology Development at the Icahn School of Medicine, Mount Sinai Hospital


Before Bobby Sebra became the Director of Technology Development at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mt Sinai in New York he worked at Pacific Biosciences, helping to develop their single molecule, long read (SMRT) sequencing technology.

In today's interview Bobby says he left PacBio to be free to use all of the available sequencing platforms to develop clinical solutions. At the Icahn School, he has been scaling up the facilities to include Illumina, Ion Torrent, PacBio and BioNano Genomics sequencers, as wells as researching some of the newer platforms such as 10X Genomics, and Oxford Nanopore Technologies. Bobby’s work includes matching these various platforms with the right project, often going back and forth between short read and long read technologies to get an adequate result.

Building on his familiarity with the PacBio system, one of Bobby's primary projects at Icahn is to take PacBio’s new long read technology and develop new clinical applications, such as looking at more polymorphic domains in the human genome at high throughput.

What are his big challenges? Bobby says that a single cell approach is the next important step for clinical sequencing, and he looks forward to a platform which integrates single cell analysis into one workflow. He is also pushing sequencing tool providers to be able to work with lower input, or smaller initial samples.

What clinical projects has Bobby excited, and what is his reaction to recent skepticism about the clinical potential for the study of genomics? Join us for a wide ranging discussion on the latest in clinical sequencing.
- See more at: http://mendelspod.com/podcasts/multi-platform-approach-clinical-sequencing-bobby-sebra-icahn-school/#sthash.gL8uoRdi.dpuf