I-Corps: Customer discovery for algorithm commercialization

这个I-Corps项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力与精确/个性化医疗的发展有关，具体来说，与使用下一代测序（NGS）发现基因组变异的准确性和速度急需改进有关。个性化医疗概念基于个体基因组变异，个性化医疗市场预计将在2022年达到1780亿美元。快速准确的变异发现产品的成本优势将与该市场用户分析的基因组数量成正比。最近，全基因组测序项目的规模和范围呈指数级增长，从2016年的10，000个公开的人类基因组到英国的100，000个基因组计划，再到美国（精准医学计划和百万退伍军人计划）和中国提出的涉及1，000，000名参与者的更大但定义不太明确的测序项目。在可预见的未来，对整个美国人口进行测序的可能性和重要性可能会节省数十亿美元的成本，从而使这种努力更加可行。这个I-Corps项目将使创业教育和客户发现的软件，将基于一种新的综合方法的基因组变异检测，GROM（基因组重排Omni-Mapper）。GROM拥有闪电般的运行速度，比最先进的变体检测管道快一个数量级。在大大减少计算时间的同时，与常用算法相比，GROM提供了上级的总体变异检测。与现有工具相比，GROM在速度和精度方面的独特优势使其成为该领域非常理想的应用程序（通过许可或按使用付费的商业模式使用）。这将需要更好地了解潜在市场和客户发现。这一进程将包括在I-Corps讲习班上进行教育，以及通过与商业和非商业实体中的许多潜在技术用户举行会议和积极沟通进行探索。客户发现工作可能会导致制定一个适当的商业计划，以吸引投资于一个潜在的启动，将执行进一步的开发和许可的产品。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得的支持，通过评估使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project relates to the developments in precision/personalized medicine, and specifically, to much-needed improvements in accuracy and speed of finding genome variants using next-generation sequencing (NGS). The personalized medicine concepts are based on individual genome variants and the personalized medicine market is expected to reach $178 billion in 2022. The cost advantage of a fast and accurate variant-finding product will be proportional to the number of genomes analyzed by users in this market. There has been a recent exponential increase in the size and scope of whole genome sequencing projects from 10,000 publicly available human genomes in 2016 to the UK 100,000 Genomes Project to even larger, though less-clearly defined, sequencing projects involving 1,000,000 participants proposed in the US (Precision Medicine Initiative, and Million Veteran Program) and China. In a likely and important scenario of sequencing the whole US population in the foreseeable future, the cost saving could be several billion dollars, thus making such efforts more feasible.This I-Corps project will enable entrepreneurial education and customer discovery for a software that will be based on a novel comprehensive method of genome variant detection, GROM (Genome Rearrangement Omni-Mapper). GROM boasts lightning-speed runtimes, an order of magnitude faster than state-of-the-art variant detection pipelines. While drastically reducing computational time, GROM provides superior overall variant detection compared to commonly employed algorithms. These unique advantages over available tools both in speed and precision could make GROM a very desirable application in this field (utilized via either licensing or pay-per-use commercial models). This will require a better understanding of a potential market and customer discovery. The process will include an educational component at I-Corps workshops and a discovery component via meetings and active communication with numerous potential users of the technology in commercial and non-commercial entities. The customer discovery effort may result in developing an appropriate business plan for attracting investments in a potential startup that will perform further development and licensing of the product.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.