At the Cerner Health Conference yesterday, GQ Life Sciences CEO Richard Resnick spoke about the significance of sequencing genomes, according to the Kansas City Business Journal.
"I am aware of no other technological innovation that has grown at this pace at this point in time," said Mr. Resnick. "In order to figure out what it means, we can't just sequence one genome; we have to sequence thousands."
Companies have started to take note of the trend, creating devices that can "take the entire human genome project and eat it for lunch," according to Mr. Resnick. San Diego-based Illumina created a device that can sequence one terabase in 12 hours.
Mr. Resnick believes that through these developments, scientists will uncover major developments in personalized medicine and in diagnosing diseases.
"Cancer is a disease of the genome," he said. "If you sequence the genome of your cancer, it's completely different from the genome of your healthy cells. Understanding your cancer's genome is how we're going to cure cancer, ultimately."