PacBio Aims for Sub-$300 Genomes with Reusable SMRT Cells

By Allison Proffitt 

November 4, 2025 | Pacific Biosciences announced a chemistry upgrade and SMRT cell reuse capability last month at the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) meeting. CEO Christian Henry said the moves targeted dramatic price reductions for customers and to compete with short-read sequencing. 

Henry told Bio-IT World that the launch of the SPRQ-Nx chemistry and SMRT cell reuse capability will bring genome sequencing prices down to $300-$350 per sample—with potential for even lower costs on large-scale projects. Henry described the SPRQ-Nx launch as, “a transformational moment for the company,” marking the culmination of a multi-year effort to “productize this technology from sample extraction through automation through new platforms through informatics.”  

The SPRQ-Nx chemistry delivers several improvements beyond cost reduction. Henry boasted a 10-15% throughput boost on 25M SMRT cells, beyond previous SPRQ chemistry increases. The new SPRQ-Nx chemistry also offers hydroxymethyl C detection, adding expanded epigenetic and multiomic capabilities, and updated epigenetic algorithms promise more accurate calling.  

Reusable SMRT Cells: The Game Changer 

The centerpiece of PacBio’s strategy is the ability to reuse SMRT cells—the expensive imaging sensors at the heart of its sequencing platform. Henry called a SMRT cell, “nothing more than a very expensive iPhone camera with a bunch of structures built on top of it to be able to look at biology and look at the genome.” 

By enabling SMRT cell reuse, PacBio can remove “80+% of the cost” from its sequencing process, Henry said. The company is launching one reuse (two total uses) on its Revio platform, with plans to expand to three uses by spring 2026 and potentially beyond. 

“The ability to use that sensor more than one time takes 80+% of the cost of our sequencing out,” Henry said. “So then we can dramatically lower the prices on a per-sample basis to our customers because we can afford to. We can pass that benefit on.” 

The reuse capability will initially be available only on Revio, PacBio's high-throughput platform, though the chemistry itself will extend to the Vega desktop system that PacBio launched last year by spring 2026. 

Strategic Rollout to Manage Revenue 

Rather than an immediate broad release, PacBio is taking a measured approach. The company launched a paid beta program following ASHG, and plans to gather deployment data. An early access program will follow in winter, with broad commercial availability expected by spring 2026. 

Henry acknowledged the delicate balance: "How do you introduce such a dramatic price drop into the market without destroying your consumable revenue? Because we're a company. We have to generate revenue to sustain ourselves." 

The strategy depends on capturing significantly more samples. "If customers don't bring more samples, it'll be hard for us to continue growing," Henry noted. The pricing structure will see kit prices increase, but with dramatically lower per-sample costs due to reusability. 

Clinical Markets Driving Growth 

Henry emphasized that PacBio's growth is increasingly driven by clinical applications. "All of our growth is effectively coming out of the clinical markets," he said. 

The company's updated PureTarget portfolio, launched in September, has been particularly successful. The panel focuses on genes difficult to sequence with short reads, using CRISPR-based targeting technology that customers can run alongside their existing short-read workflows while eliminating legacy technologies like Southern blots and MLPA [multiplex ligation-dependent probe amplification]. 

"That pretty much overshadows all of this because that's really where the revenue growth is coming from right now," Henry said of the clinical push. 

Platform Strategy: Three-Pronged Approach 

Henry remains committed to a three-platform vision for PacBio: ultra-high throughput, high throughput (Revio), and desktop (Vega). The company is actively developing an ultra-high throughput platform for large centralized labs like Quest Diagnostics and Myriad Genetics that will process hundreds of thousands of samples annually. 

The Vega platform, which began shipping in late December 2025, has exceeded expectations, he said. After shipping 27 units in the first quarter and about 38 in the second, Henry believes the platform could eventually sustain 50-100 units per quarter. At $169,000, the system has seen strong acceptance with minimal price resistance and faster-than-typical sales cycles. 

Henry emphasized a shift in development philosophy: "We fundamentally have changed how we think about developing technology internally. We're working on multiple generations at the same time in different parts of the organization." 

Pan-Genome Projects and the AI Future 

PacBio is positioning its technology for the emerging era of population genomics and AI-driven analysis. The Korean Pangenome Reference Project, which chose PacBio HiFi technology as its primary sequencing platform in October, exemplifies this trend. The project will generate the first large-scale, telomere-to-telomere quality reference genomes representing the Korean population and integrate the data into the global Human Pangenome Reference Consortium (HPRC). 

PacBio will provide integrated sequencing across the workflow including HiFi whole genome sequencing as well as multiomic analysis including epigenetic signatures, structural variation, and RNA isoforms. 

"This is where the world is going to go, is this multiomic look at the reference genome," Henry said, noting similar projects in Singapore, Japan, and Eastern Europe as populations seek their own reference genomes beyond the Western European-based standard. 

Henry sees an opportunity for PacBio data to become "the token of choice" for AI foundation models in genomics. "Now that we're getting cost to the right spot and scale to the right spot and we have the most comprehensive genome on the market, we can become the data analysis standard," he said. 

Market Conditions Improving 

Henry acknowledged that the past few years have been challenging across the life science tools sector but expressed cautious optimism. "It does seem like we're kind of all bouncing along the bottom now, and I do think that we're starting to see some green shoots of that starting to turn," he said. 

He noted a significant increase in long-read sequencing research at ASHG, including papers demonstrating that short-read sequencing misses important somatic variants in cancer that could be useful for tumor classification and therapy selection. 

"The papers are actually starting to bear that out," Henry said. "And so now it's up to us to execute and get the products to market that make the economic realities, make it so that you can take advantage of these papers because you've got the economics now to be able to do it."