China's $9 Billion Effort to Beat the US in Genetic Testing

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Ylan Q Mui 梅恩, China's $9 Billion Effort to Beat the US in Genetic Testing. Washington Post, Dec 30, 2016
https://www.washingtonpost.com/n ... in-genetic-testing/

Note:
(a) "from the first moment Quinlan[, a newborn son of an ordinary ostonian, Lindsay Weekes,] drew air, Lindsay could see he was tense, his muscles rigid. * * * [China is] funding promising new companies both at home and abroad — including a laboratory that handles some of the toughest cases at Boston Children's Hospital, where Quinlan, has become a favorite of the staff. * * * One of the founders of the lab was born and trained in China before immigrating to the United States. Chinese company WuXi NextCODE is one of its chief investors, and researchers there use WuXi’s programs to analyze the reams of data inside our DNA."

Quinlan, an Irish surname, here is used as a male given name.
(b) "Two years ago, on New Year’s Eve, Weekes and her husband were squirreled away in their tidy split-level home in the suburbs of Boston."

(c) "Scientist and entrepreneur Ge Li is a poster child for China's new model. Trained at Columbia University, Li was working as a laboratory scientist in Philadelphia in 2000 when he realized he could replicate his job in his home country for a fraction of the cost. His company, WuXi AppTec 药明康德, which includes WuXi NextCODE 明码（上海) 生物科技, is now estimated to be worth more than $3.3 billion. Roughly 14,000 people carry out the company's research and product development around the world."

药明康德收购NextCODE公司 创建基因医学全球领军企业. 药明康德, Jan 11, 2015
www.wuxiapptec.com.cn/press/detail/235/18.html

The first two paragraphs:

"药明康德今日宣布以6500万美元现金收购NextCODE Health公司。NextCODE是业界领先的基因分析和生物信息公司，在美国和冰岛有运营实体。药明康德计划将NextCODE与药明康德基因中心合并，成立一家新公司WuXi NextCODE  Genomics。新公司总部将位于中国上海，运营地区涵盖美国麻萨诸塞州坎布里奇市以及冰岛的雷克雅未克市。新公司管理层包括首席执行官李革博士，首席财务官胡正国先生，首席运营官Hannes Smárason先生，首席科学官Jeffrey Gulcher博士，首席技术官孙洪业博士以及信息学副总裁Hakon Gudbjartsson博士。  

"NextCODE Health分拆自deCODE公司，后者成立于1996年，于2012年12月被安进公司（Amgen）收购。deCODE公司在分析和理解基因与疾病关系方面居于世界领先地位，利用其独特的技术知识和冰岛人口完善的医疗数据库资源，deCODE公司目前已发现包括心血管疾病和癌症在内数十种疾病的遗传风险因子。 * * *

(i) Its English press release stated, "WuXi PharmaTech (Cayman) Inc. (NYSE:  WX), a leading open-access R&D capability and technology platform company * * * NextCODE Health was spun out from deCODE genetics after the latter was acquired by Amgen in December 2012. Founded in 1996, deCODE genetics is a global leader in analyzing and understanding the links between the genome and disease susceptibility. Using its unique expertise and population resources in Iceland, deCODE genetics has discovered genetic risk factors for dozens of diseases ranging from cardiovascular disease to cancer. In October 2013, NextCODE Health announced that it had obtained from Amgen a five-year exclusive license for sequence-based clinical diagnostic applications using technology developed by deCODE genetics.  NextCODE Health has developed the world's leading genome sequence analysis platform and the most efficient database architecture * * * The WuXi Genome Center was established in 2011
(ii) deCODE genetics (The "g" in lower case) was and is a biopharmaceutical company based in Reykjavík, Iceland.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeCODE_genetics
("2012, deCODE genetics was purchased by Amgen for $415 million[11] which in October 2013 spun off deCODE genetics' systems and database to a new company called NextCODE Health[12] which in turn was acquired in January 2015 by the Chinese company WuXi PharmaTech for $65 million")

(d) "Until last year, WuXi's largest division was listed on the New York Stock Exchange. The company is now privately owned, but speculation abounds that it will eventually go public again — on a Chinese exchange. * * * Sequencing is only the first step in what doctors call the 'diagnostic odyssey.' Making sense of the resulting mountain of data is its own challenge. Unspooling just one human genome takes up roughly 150 gigabytes, the equivalent of roughly 32 DVDs.  Geneticist Tim Yu [no Chinese name found] is one of the founders of Claritas [based in Cambridge, Massachusetts; no Chinese name], the sequencing lab that handled Quinlan’s case, and he hunted through the entire library of the boy’s DNA for clues. * * * a mutation of the BRAT1 [RCA1 Associated ATM Activator 1] gene * * * Quinlan's disorder now has a name: RMFSL, or rigidity and multifocal seizure syndrome, lethal neonate."