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.
BGI’s global expansion is based on the company’s quotes founded in Shenzhen with the Chinese government, which includes its role as operator of China’s national genetic database and its studies in key government-affiliated laboratories. BGI, which says in market inventory records that he points the Communist party in power to achieve its purpose of “seizing the heights of foreign festivals in biotechnology,” is under increasing scrutiny in a bloodless war unfolding between Washington and Beijing, Reuters found.
Reuters found no evidence that BGI is violating patient privacy protections where these apply. Responding to questions from the news agency, BGI said it is not owned by 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 always has been, to use genomics to improve people’s physical condition and well-being.”
China’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the country had shown openness, transparency and accountability by “sharing data and reports with the foreign community, offering materials to the countries concerned,” adding COVID-19 verification kits and protection equipment, and helping countries improve opposing combat.
The scope of BGI’s efforts to dominate a geostrategic industry, as well as its efforts to gather genetic knowledge from around the world, has been reconstructed through Reuters from public documents and dozens of interviews with scientists, researchers and fitness officials.
Some U.S. officials warn of a double threat to national security in the BGI component: sensitive genetic data on U.S. citizens would likely fall into foreign hands, and U.S. corporations threaten to waste their merits of genomic innovation for Chinese corporations.
Earlier this year, the U.S. National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC) issued a practical aptitude recommendation to avoid “potential threats posed by foreign powers” in relation to COVID-19 testing. Other officials draw parallels between BGI and Huawei Technologies Co, China’s telecommunications titan, whose 5G technology, according to the United States, can only be used to capture the non-public knowledge that Beijing can exploit. Huawei said he would refuse to cooperate with espionage.
Data sharing is for medical research. But in the case of genetic data, officials and scientists say the dangers are that they can become a weapon.
Individuals can be known through part of their DNA, and some researchers have discovered genetic links to behaviors such as depressive disorder. A hostile actor can use knowledge to attack Americans for surveillance, extortion, or manipulation, according to a comprehensive report ready for the U.S. Director of National Intelligence’s Office. Through clinical and medical experts in January, he added that such associations are still 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 the option to share this data with the Chinese government, Huawei said that only users of its generation can describe with whom to make a percentage of the 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 scientific research on the genomes, or genetic blueprints, of the virus and patients with COVID-19. But it said this research is separate from the tests it provides to other nations 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 FIRE EYE
BGI was involved in China’s response to the coronavirus from the start. Its scientists were among teams that sequenced the virus genome and shared that information in January.
On Dec 26, BGI collected and tested a throat swab from a 44-year-old man who was a patient in the military hospital in Wuhan, according to a record of the sequence that was shared with other researchers on a global database. The World Health Organisation (WHO) learned of cases of pneumonia of an unknown cause in Wuhan on Dec 31; the blueprint of the patient’s virus was named 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 the end of the month, the company had designed an automated lab for the Wuhan government to build massive evidence. BGI called the design “Eye of Fire”, in the mythical king of Chinese monkeys to see the threats disguised.
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.
China’s government helped coordinate some of BGI’s deals. The Solomon Islands said it had received a $300,000 cheque from the Chinese embassy, which advised the island nation to buy tests and lab equipment from BGI. China’s foreign ministry said China has done its best to ensure safety 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 currently element, which the company offers in addition to its marketing materials, is the genetic sequencing team.
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 received a $1.5 billion loan from the state-run China Development Bank, some of which it used to buy 128 sequencing machines from an American firm, San Diego-based Illumina Inc.
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 apparatus and apparatus, pending a trial to determine whether the generation was copied from Illumina.
In search of the court order, Illumina’s lawyers told the court: “BGI is making plans with excessive discounts and ambitious sales opposing Illumina.”
BGI declined to comment on the case. In court documents, BGI denied violating Illumina’s patents and requested that parts of the court order be suspended while appealing the decision. Illumina told Reuters that COVID-19 would increase demand for sequencers.
“Nice place to stay”
Worth between $20,000 for a portable style and $1 million for a rugged machine, gene sequencers are a component of a country’s pandemic arsenal.
Even before the new coronavirus, in October 2019, the Ethiopian government announced that it would create a genomics laboratory with devices donated through BGI. Months later, Illumina donated sequencers to 10 African countries to monitor the virus, the US corporation 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 money. It has said they will also help it study the virus in large 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 opened, coordinator Jelena Begovic told Reuters in May that DNA sequencers help researchers by linking genetic information on the virus with genetic information on the patient. In future, she said, the labs would underpin cooperation 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 told an opening ceremony that after the pandemic, “We will have the most modern lab, which will enable us to start talking with BGI on how to build the most advanced institute for precision medicine and genetics in this region.”
Sweden, too, has received sequencing equipment from BGI. The Karolinska Institute, a medical university in Stockholm, hopes to use it to identify a human genotype that is more susceptible to the disease, microbiology professor Lars Engstrand said in a presentation on BGI’s 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.
“There will be no sequence information sent to any other servers or computers outside our institute,” said Engstrand, who heads the institute’s Center for Translational Microbiome Research, in an email. “No cloud solution will be used for these sensitive data.”
He added that he was not sure that the institute would advance human genome sequencing.
“CONSIDERABLE SUPPORT”
Researchers globally are sharing virus data, but BGI has also set up its own sharing platform, the “Global Initiative on Open-source Genomics” 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.
“At first, you will be asked to make a percentage of the genome knowledge of the virus with the public (National GeneBank),” the site says.
In return, the site offers sequencing and “considerable support” for loading kits and reagents.
BGI told Reuters that it had gained samples from patients under the new program: the samples were sequenced at local facilities.
He stated that his purpose was to “develop more high-quality genomic knowledge about (the) virus with the BGI sequencing solution.” It sought to facilitate the immediate and open exchange of genomic knowledge to studies 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 laboratories supported an examination conducted through a dozen BGI researchers who sequenced the genomes of more than three hundred COVID-19 patients at a Shenzhen hospital, according to an article they shared at MedRvix, for previously published clinical articles.
“We and others continue to recruit patients and knowledge in China and around the world for the host genetic background underlying the other clinical outcomes of the patients,” the researchers wrote.
As immediate COVID-19 tests are followed around the world, researchers added, it will be vital to examine patients who show no symptoms. The test leader did not answer Reuters’ questions.
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 by the US Commerce Department last month for China’s alleged human rights violations. Washington alleged BGI is involved in conducting genetic analysis of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang in western China, where UN experts and activists say Muslims were held 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.
China’s security apparatus is a BGI customer. Another BGI subsidiary, Forensic Genomics International, says on its website it works with China’s Public Security Bureau. It had multiple contracts with the police to collect male DNA samples, as well as samples from some newborn babies, a survey this year by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute found.
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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