SYDNEY (Reuters) – As countries struggle to control the new coronavirus, a Chinese company has a world-famous name.
BGI Group, described in a 2015 study as “Goliat” in the fast-growing box of genomic research, is an opening created through the pandemic to expand its global presence. In the past six months, he says he has sold 35 million COVID-19 immediate control 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 in addition to the verification kits, the company is distributing gene sequencing generation that, according to U.S. security officials, could threaten national security. This is a sensitive domain worldwide. Sequencers are used to analyze genetics and can unlock complicated non-public information.
In clinical and online journals, BGI asks foreign fitness researchers to submit viral knowledge generated on their equipment, as well as samples of patients who tested positive for COVID-19, to share them publicly with the Chinese government-funded National GeneBank.
As BGI’s presence in the gene sequencing industry grows, a senior U.S. management official told Reuters on anonymity condition, as well as the threat of China simply collecting genetic data from populations around the world.
BGI’s global expansion is based on the company’s quotes founded in Shenzhen with the Chinese government, adding its role as operator of China’s national genetic database and its studies in government-affiliated primary laboratories. BGI, which says in the inventory market presentations that target the ruling Communist Party to achieve its purpose of “seizing the heights of foreign festivals in biotechnology,” is under increasing scrutiny in a growing onslout war between Washington and Beijing, Reuters found.
Reuters found no evidence that BGI violates patient privacy protections when applied. In response to the news agency’s questions, BGI said he belonged to the Chinese government.
“In the existing political climate, the concern raised about the use of the BGI generation is unfounded and misleading,” BGI told Reuters. “The BGI project is, and at all times, to use genomics to gain advantages from people’s fitness and well-being.”
China’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the country had been open, transparent and accountable by “sharing data and reports with the foreign community, offering materials to the countries involved,” adding COVID-19 verification kits and protective equipment, and helping countries improve control. of the epidemic.
The scale of BGI’s efforts to dominate a geostrategic industry, as well as its efforts to collect 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 BGI’s dual national security: sensitive genetic data on U.S. citizens may fall into foreign hands, and U.S. corporations waste their merits of genomic innovation on Chinese corporations.
Earlier this year, the U.S. National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC) issued a practical aptitude recommendation to avoid “potential threats posed through foreign powers” in connection with COVID-19 testing. Other officials draw parallels between BGI and Huawei Technologies Co., the Chinese telecommunications titan whose 5G technology, according to the Us, can be used to capture non-public knowledge that Beijing could 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 weapons.
Individuals may be known through part of their DNA and some researchers have discovered genetic links to behaviors such as depressive disorder. A hostile actor may simply use knowledge to attack Americans for surveillance, extortion, or manipulation purposes, according to a comprehensive report prepared by the Office of the U.S. Director of National Intelligence through medical and clinical experts in January, who added that such partnerships are still fine. Understood.
Knowledge of the genetic makeup of national or military decision-makers, and their propensity to act safely, can be used through conflicting intelligence agencies as a mechanism of influence, the report “Save the Bioeconomy” of national academies said. science, engineering and medicine. Genetic knowledge can reveal a vulnerability in the United States to express disease, he added.
As corporations rush to expand and patent biological drugs for the global market, the ethnic diversity of the American population makes American genomic knowledge more valuable than the knowledge of countries with homogeneous populations, according to the report. In fact, the more varied the knowledge, the greater the advantages of identifying genetic diseases. The report raised the option that BGI simply 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, director of the NCSC, told Reuters in response to questions about Chinese genomics companies.
BGI and Huawei said they were running together. In a video that is no longer available 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 reaction to Reuters’ questions about the option to share this data with the Chinese government, Huawei said that only users of its generation can simply outline who to share the percentage data with. “Huawei’s cloud generation and cloud computing installations are secure and comply with foreign security standards,” he said, adding that he complies 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 coVID-19 patients. 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 be sure that providers will not threaten national security, privacy or intellectual property. Trust cannot exist when a company is subject to an authoritarian.” Government, such as the People’s Republic of China, which does not prohibit the misuse of data”.
FROM “WHO1” TO FIRE EYE
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’s virus master plan has been called OMS1.
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 by Chinese scientists at The Lancet on January 29. BGI sequented those samples.
By the end of the month, the company had designed an automated lab for the Wuhan government to massively build the evidence. BGI named the design “Eye of Fire” in honor of the legendary Chinese Monkey King’s ability 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.
The Chinese government helped coordinate some of the BGI agreements. Solomon Islands said they 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 everything it could to protect and reliability medical supplies.
In addition to the donations, BGI reported that lab contracts worth millions of dollars. While white protective suit technicians are fire Eye construction laboratories in countries ranging from Australia to Saudi Arabia, BGI Genomics, an indexed subsidiary of the group, said last month’s call 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, paints by detecting the virus’s genetic clothing in a patient’s pattern to determine if a user has been infected. BGI states that these controls do not provide access to patient data.
The part of the moment, 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 in paints for vaccine development.
The DNA sequencer application is also the basis of their role in a lucrative medical box known as precision medicine or medicine.
Instead of looking for unique remedies for everyone, precision medicine focuses on how other people’s genes interact with their environment to help them wait for their threat of disease or reaction to drugs.
In July, BGI Genomics, an indexed subsidiary of BGI on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, requested a capital accumulation of $293 million, and told investors in the presentation that they would help it collect as much patient knowledge as possible, “about the human body, genome, behavior of people’s lives and the environment , for greater perception and more accurate diagnosis.”
The company also announced its goal of advertising the Fire Eye Laboratories it deploys for COVID-19 for accuracy after the pandemic.
FROM CUSTOMER TO RIVAL
BGI was established through 4 scientists in 1999 as a non-profit research organization called the Beijing Institute of Genomics, to allow China to enroll in a global human genome mapping project. Since 2016, its headquarters has hosted and operated the government-funded China National GeneBank, a bioregator of 20 million genetic samples of plants, animals and humans.
In 2010, BGI obtained a $1.5 billion loan from the Development Bank of China, a state-founded bank, part of which used to acquire 128 sequencing 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 controlled the purchase of 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 introduced BGI Genomics in 2017.
This year, BGI Genomics told investors it was charging $95 million to create a total human genome 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 intellectual property. In June, a U.S. court issued an initial court order prohibiting the sale, distribution or promotion of BGI devices and appliances, pending a trial as to whether the generation had been copied from Illumina.
In search of the court order, Illumina’s lawyers told the court: “BGI is making plans with over-value 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 encourage demand for sequencers.
“Nice place to stay”
With a value label ranging from $20,000 for a portable style to $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 company said.
At least five countries around the world have won BGI sequencers with Fire Eye laboratories, according to country statements or BGI. In many cases, BGI owns or operates Fire Eye Laboratories, but only supplies the equipment, the company told Reuters.
For BGI, sequencers offer more than money. He said they would also examine the virus in giant populations.
One of the beneficiaries of BGI’s sequencing apparatus is Serbia, the Balkan country where Beijing has invested heavily in its One Belt initiative, One Road to open industrial ties for Chinese companies. Two laboratories have been opened there. Both were donated through 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 from the virus to the patient’s genetic data. In the future, he said, the labs would cooperate with BGI.
“Today, data is more valuable than gold,” he says. In this sense, it is also a source of data for them about this region.”
Premier Ana Brnabic said in an opening rite that after the pandemic “we will have the ultimate fashion lab, which will allow us to start talking to BGI about how to build the institute of maximum complexity for precision and genetic medicine in this region”.
Sweden also won the BGI sequencing apparatus. The Karolinska Institute, a medical university in Stockholm, hopes to use it to identify a human genotype more related to the disease, microbiology professor Lars Engstrand said in a presentation on the BGI website.
When asked through Reuters about the threat that Swedish genomic knowledge could be collected through the Chinese government, Engstrand said it is a “very applicable issue” and the institute’s IT security branch had reviewed its collaboration with BGI.
“No serial data will be sent to other servers or computers outside the doors 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’s not sure the institute will move forward with human genome sequencing, he added.
“Nice stay”
Researchers around global percentage knowledge of viruses, however, BGI has also established its own exchange platform, the “Global Open Source Genomics Initiative” for the new coronavirus.
In a related China National GeneBank, giogs.genomics.cn, invites foreign scientists to submit virus data, adding the patient’s age, gender and location, collected in accordance with local regulations.
“You will be asked to provide a percentage of the knowledge of the viral genome with the public (National GeneBank) initially,” the site says.
In return, the site offers sequencing and “considerable support” for loading kits and reagents.
BGI told Reuters that it had earned samples from patients under the new program; 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 for studies on the virus.
In addition to the National GeneBank, BGI headquarters is also home to at least 4 government-designated “key laboratories” for genomic studies, which are also government-funded. BGI indicated 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 about the genetic background of the host underlying the other clinical outcomes of the patients,” the researchers wrote.
As immediate COVID-19 tests around the world are followed, researchers added, it will be vital to examine patients who show no symptoms. The test leader did not answer Reuters’ questions.
SAFETY DEVICES
The increase in the BGI pandemic comes at a time of intense tensions between China and the United States, over China’s genetic program.
Two BGI subsidiaries were blacklisted through the U.S. Department of Commerce last month for alleged human rights violations in China. Washington has alleged that BGI is involved in the genetic investigation of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang, western China, where UN experts and activists say Muslims were being held in detention centres.
BGI said in a statement that it “does not tolerate and will never worry about human rights violations.” The Chinese government claims that the camps are vocational education and training establishments and denies that they violate the human rights of detainees.
The Chinese security apparatus is a BGI customer. Another BGI subsidiary, Forensic Genomics International, says it works with the China 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 this year’s research through the Australian Institute for Strategic Policy.
BGI claimed that the forensic subsidiary complied with clinical ethics and the law. The Foreign Ministry declined to comment.
(Needham reported from Sydney; Additional reports through Daniel Levine in San Francisco, Ivana Sekularac in Belgrade, Tova Cohen in Tel Aviv, Joel Schectman and David Brunnstrom in Washington, DC, Cate Cadell in Beijing, Steve Stecklow in London, David Kirton in Shenzhen; Edited through Sara Ledwith)
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