BGI Group, described in a 2015 review as “Goliat” in the fast-growing picture of genomic research, is an opening created through the pandemic to expand its global footprint. In the past six months, he says he has sold 35 million COVID-19 immediate verification kits to 180 countries and is building 58 laboratories in 18 countries. Part of the apparatus was donated through the philanthropic branch of BGI, promoted through Chinese embassies as a continuation of Chinese viral diplomacy.
But as well as test kits, the company is distributing gene-sequencing technology that US security officials say could threaten national security. This is a sensitive area globally. Sequencers are used to analyse genetic material, and can unlock powerful personal information.
In science journals and online, BGI is calling on international health researchers to send in virus data generated on its equipment, as well as patient samples that have tested positive for COVID-19, to be shared publicly via China’s government-funded National GeneBank.
As BGI’s foothold in the gene-sequencing industry grows, a senior US administration official told Reuters on condition of anonymity, so does the risk China could harvest genetic information from populations around the world.
Underpinning BGI’s global expansion are the Shenzhen-based company’s links to the Chinese government, which include its role as operator of China’s national genetic database and its research in government-affiliated key laboratories. BGI, which says in stock market filings it aims to help the ruling Communist Party achieve its goal to “seize the commanding heights of international biotechnology competition,” is coming under increasing scrutiny in an escalating Cold War between Washington and Beijing, Reuters found.
Reuters found no evidence that BGI violates patient privacy protections when applied. In response to questions from the news agency, BGI said he belonged to the Chinese government.
“In the existing political climate, the concern generated by the use of the BGI generation is unfounded and misleading,” BGI told Reuters. “The BGI project is, and at all times, has been to use genomics to improve people’s fitness and well-being.”
China’s foreign ministry said in a statement the country has been open, transparent and responsible in “sharing information and experience with the international community, providing supplies to relevant countries” including COVID-19 test kits and protective equipment, and helping countries improve epidemic control.
The extent of BGI’s endeavours to dominate an industry with geostrategic value, as well as of its efforts to gather genetic data from around the world, was pieced together by Reuters from public documents and dozens of interviews with scientists, researchers and health officials.
Some US officials warn of a dual risk to national security from BGI: Sensitive genetic information about US citizens may fall into foreign hands, and American companies stand to lose their innovative edge in the field of genomics to Chinese firms.
Earlier this year, the US National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC) published practical tips for health services to avoid “potential threats posed by foreign powers” in connection with COVID-19 tests. Other officials draw parallels between BGI and Huawei Technologies Co, the Chinese telecommunications titan whose 5G technology the United States says could be used to capture personal data that Beijing could exploit. Huawei has said it would refuse to cooperate with spying.
Sharing data is essential for medical research. But in the case of genetic data, officials and scientists say the risks are that it could be weaponized.
Individuals can be identified by a portion of their DNA, and some researchers have found genetic links with behaviours such as depressive disorder. A hostile actor could use such data to target individuals for surveillance, extortion or manipulation, according to a comprehensive report prepared for the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence by science and medical experts in January, which added that such associations are not yet well understood.
Knowledge of the genetic makeup of national or military decision-makers, and their propensity to act safely, can only be used through conflicting intelligence agencies as a mechanism to influence, according to the report, “Saving the Bioeconomy”, national academies. science, engineering and medicine. Genetic knowledge can reveal a U.S. vulnerability. To express illness, he added.
As corporations rush to expand and patent biological drugs for the global market, the ethnic diversity of the U.S. population. It makes U.S. genomic knowledge more valuable than knowledge of countries with homogeneous populations, according to the report. In fact, the more varied the knowledge, the greater the merits of identifying genetic diseases. The report raised the option that BGI can only collect dna sequence data from American genetic samples, giving it “asymmetrical” credit to U.S. corporations.
Genetic information, which adds a circle of family medical history, “is hugely priced and can be exploited through foreign regimes for economic purposes,” Bill Evanina, ncSC director, told Reuters in response to questions about Chinese genomic companies.
BGI and Huawei said they were running together. In a video that can no longer be viewed on Huawei’s website, a BGI executive said he was processing “astonishing volumes of data” from his gene sequencers, stored in Huawei’s high-power systems. In response to Reuters’ questions about whether this data can be perceived only with the Chinese government, Huawei said that only users of its generation can describe with who percentage of data. “Huawei’s cloud generation and computing facilities are secure and comply with foreign security standards,” he said, adding that he complied with all laws.
BGI stated that he did not have to know the patient from his diagnostic tests.
The company said it is conducting clinical studies on genomes, or genetics, of the virus and patients with COVID-19. But he said the studies are separated from the evidence he provided to other countries to diagnose COVID-19.
When asked about China’s genomic ambitions, a U.S. State Department spokesman. He said: “We countries want to make sure that providers do not threaten national security, privacy or intellectual property. Trust cannot exist when a company is an issue for an authoritarian government, such as the People’s Republic of China, which has no prohibitions on the misuse of data.”
FROM “WHO1” TO THE EYE OF FIRE
BGI has been concerned about China’s reaction to coronavirus from the beginning. Scientists were among those who sequenced the genome of the virus and shared this data in January.
On December 26, BGI collected and tested a throat pattern of a 44-year-old man who was a patient at Wuhan Military Hospital, according to a recording of the images he shared with other researchers in a global database. The World Health Organization (WHO) learned of cases of pneumonia of unknown cause in Wuhan on 31 December; The patient virus master plan has been called WHO1.
The week after the first test, BGI took samples from 3 other hospital patients who had visited the local seafood market, according to an article published by Chinese scientists in The Lancet on January 29. BGI sequences those samples.
By month’s end, the company had designed an automated laboratory for the Wuhan government to massively increase testing. BGI called the design “Fire Eye,” after the ability of China’s fabled Monkey King to see disguised threats.
The labs have been replicated in China and the Mammoth Foundation, a charity created a few months earlier through BGI, has started donating tests and laboratories around the world. In the middle of the year, BGI’s COVID-19 laboratory apparatus was installed in at least 10 countries through charitable donations, corporate statements and local reports.
The Chinese government helped coordinate some of the BGI agreements. Solomon Islands said it won a check for $300,000 from the Chinese Embassy, which begged the island country to buy evidence and laboratory equipment from BGI. China’s Foreign Ministry said China had done the most productive thing for the protection and reliability of medical supplies.
In addition to donations, BGI reported that lab contracts are worth millions of dollars. While white protective suit technicians are construction Fire Eye laboratories in countries ranging from Australia to Saudi Arabia, BGI Genomics, an indexed subsidiary of the group, said last month’s application would increase profits by 700% during the first part of the year to more than $218. Million.
POWERFUL INFORMATION
BGI’s COVID-19 programme has two aspects.
First, diagnostic verification kits, equipped with high-speed remedy robots to treat giant volumes, paint through the detection of genetic curtains of the virus in a patient’s pattern to determine if a user has been infected. BGI states that these checks do not provide access to patient data.
The second part, which the company offers as an add-on in its marketing materials, is gene-sequencing equipment.
In the pandemic, researchers around the world use sequencers to track virus mutations, see what mutation is spreading, and strains or samples to paints for vaccine development.
The request for DNA sequencers is also the basis of their role in a lucrative medical box known as precision medicine or medicine.
Rather than seek one-drug-suits-all treatments, precision medicine focuses on how different people’s genes interact with their environment to help predict their risk of disease, or their response to medications.
In July, BGI Genomics, BGI’s listed subsidiary on the Shenzhen stock exchange filed for a $293 million capital hike, telling investors in the filing their support would help it collect as much patient data as possible, “on the human body, genome, people’s living habits and environment, so we can understand more, and diagnose in a more precise way.”
The company also announced its goal of announcing Fire Eye Laboratories that it implements for COVID-19 accurately after the pandemic.
FROM CUSTOMER TO RIVAL
BGI was established through 4 scientists in 1999 as a non-profit research organization called the Beijing Genomics Institute, to allow China to enroll in a global human genome mapping project. Since 2016, its headquarters are home to and operated by the government-funded China National GeneBank, a biorepertory of 20 million genetic samples of plants, animals and humans.
In 2010, BGI won a $1.5 billion loan from the Development Bank of China, a state-founded bank whose component used to acquire 128 sequence machines from an American company, Illumina Inc., founded in San Diego.
Two years later, Beijing said in a State Council plan for bioindustry that it was looking for China to expand genetic sequencing technology. In 2013, BGI controlling buying Illumina’s largest competitor, California-based Complete Genomics, for $118 million. He is now the American study arm of the Chinese organization. BGI Group introduced its own sequencing apparatus in 2015; The organization launched BGI Genomics in 2017.
This year, BGI Genomics told investors it charged $95 million for a total human genome series in 2001. In 2014, Illumina announced that she had reduced the charge to less than $1,000. Now BGI can do it for $600.
In May, MGI Tech, BGI’s subsidiary that manufactures DNA sequencers, raised $1 billion in capital.
But after BGI indicated that it would launch its sequencers in the United States, it faced a challenge: an allegation of infringement of Illumina’s property. In June, a U.S. court issued an initial court order prohibiting the sale, distribution or promotion of the BGI device and apparatus, pending a trial as to whether the generation was copied from Illumina.
Seeking the injunction, Illumina’s lawyers told the court: “BGI plans extreme price cutting and ambitious sales directly against Illumina.”
BGI declined to comment on the case. In court papers, BGI denied infringing Illumina’s patents and asked that parts of the injunction be put on hold while it appealed the ruling. Illumina told Reuters COVID-19 will boost sequencer demand.
“Nice place to stay”
With a price tag of between $20,000 for a portable model and $1 million for a powerful machine, gene sequencers are an important part of a country’s pandemic armoury.
Even before the new coronavirus, in October 2019, Ethiopia’s government said it would establish a genomics lab with equipment donated by BGI. Months later, Illumina donated sequencers to 10 African nations to help monitor the virus, the US company said.
At least five countries worldwide have received BGI’s sequencers with the Fire Eye labs, according to statements the countries or BGI have released. In many cases BGI does not own or operate the Fire Eye laboratories, but simply provides the equipment, the company told Reuters.
For BGI, sequencers offer more than just money. He said he would also be tested for the virus in giant populations.
One recipient of BGI sequencing equipment is Serbia, the Balkan country where Beijing has invested heavily as part of its One Belt, One Road initiative to open trade links for Chinese companies. Two labs have opened there. Both were donated by Chinese companies, Beijing and Belgrade said.
After the first lab was opened, coordinator Jelena Begovic told Reuters in May that DNA sequencers help researchers link genetic data about the virus with genetic data about the patient. In the future, he said, the labs would cooperate with BGI.
“Information is nowadays sometimes more valuable than gold,” she said. “In that sense, this is also a source of information for them regarding this region.”
Prime Minister Ana Brnabic said in an opening rite that after the pandemic, “we will have the world-class laboratory, which will allow us to start arguing with BGI on how to build the ultimate complex institute for precision and genetic medicine in this region.” “
Sweden also won the BGI sequencing apparatus. Karolinska Institute, a medical university in Stockholm, hopes to use it to identify one more human genotype to the disease, microbiology professor Lars Engstrand said in a presentation on the BGI website.
When asked through Reuters about the threat of Swedish genomic knowledge being collected through the Chinese government, Engstrand said it was “a very applicable problem” and that the institute’s PC security branch had reviewed its collaboration with BGI.
“No serial data will be sent to other servers or computers outside of our institute,” said Engstrand, who runs the institute’s Translational Microbiome Research Center, in an email. “No cloud solution will be used for this sensitive data.”
He added that he was not sure that the institute would advance human genome sequencing.
“Nice stay”
Researchers around the overall percentage of virus knowledge, however, BGI has also established its own sharing platform, the “Global Open Source Genomics Initiative” for the new coronavirus.
On a website together with the China National GeneBank, giogs.genomics.cn, it invites international scientists to send in virus information including patient age, gender and location, collected in accordance with local regulations.
“You will be asked to share virus genome data to the public via (the National GeneBank) in the first instance,” the site says.
In exchange, the site offers sequencing services and “considerable support” for the cost of kits and reagents.
BGI told Reuters it had received no patient samples under this new programme – samples have been sequenced in local facilities.
It said its goal is to “develop more high-quality genome data of (the) virus with BGI’s sequencing solution.” It said it wants to facilitate the rapid and open sharing of genome data to support research on the virus.
In addition to National GeneBank, BGI’s headquarters also houses at least 4 government-designated “key laboratories” for genomic studies, which are also government-funded. BGI stated that this investment is used for studies and operations.
One of the labs supported a study by a dozen BGI researchers who sequenced the genomes of more than 300 COVID-19 patients in a Shenzhen hospital, according to a paper they shared on MedRvix, a website for pre-published scientific papers.
“We and the others are continuing to recruit patients and data in China and around the world to understand the host genetic background underlying the varying clinical outcome of the patients,” the researchers wrote.
As rapid COVID-19 tests are adopted globally, the researchers added, it will be important to study patients who don’t show symptoms. The study’s lead author didn’t respond to questions from Reuters.
SECURITY APPARATUS
BGI’s pandemic push comes as tensions between China and the United States are mounting, including over China’s genetic programme.
Two BGI subsidiaries were blacklisted through the U.S. Department of Commerce last month for alleged human rights violations in China. Washington alleged that BGI was concerned about genetic research by Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang, western China, where UN experts and activists say Muslims have been detained in detention centres.
BGI said in a statement it “does not condone and would never be involved in any human-rights abuses.” Chinese officials say the camps are educational and vocational institutions and deny they violate the human rights of the detainees.
The Chinese security appliance is a BGI client. Another BGI subsidiary, Forensic Genomics International, says it is operating with china’s Office of Public Security. He had several contracts with the police to collect male DNA samples, as well as samples from some newborns, according to research conducted this year through the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
BGI stated that the forensic branch complied with clinical ethics and the law. The Foreign Ministry declined to comment.
This story published from a firm thread without converting the text.
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