bngo-20211231
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UNITED STATES
SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION
Washington, D.C. 20549
(Mark One)
☒ ANNUAL REPORT PURSUANT TO SECTION 13 OR 15(d) OF THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934
For the fiscal year ended December 31, 2021
OR
☐ TRANSITION REPORT PURSUANT TO SECTION 13 OR 15(d) OF THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934 FOR THE TRANSITION PERIOD FROM
Commission File Number 001-38613
Bionano Genomics, Inc.
(Exact name of Registrant as specified in its Charter)
(Address of principal executive offices) (Zip Code)
Registrant’s telephone number, including area code: (858) 888-7600
Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(b) of the Act:
Title of Each Class Trading Symbol(s) Name of Each Exchange on which Registered
Common Stock, $0.0001 par value BNGO The Nasdaq Stock Market, LLC
Warrants to purchase Common Stock BNGOW The Nasdaq Stock Market, LLC
Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(g) of the Act: None
Indicate by check mark if the Registrant is a well-known seasoned issuer, as defined in Rule 405 of the Securities Act. YesxNo ̈
Indicate by check mark if the Registrant is not required to file reports pursuant to Section 13 or 15(d) of the Act. Yes ̈Nox
Indicate by check mark whether the Registrant: (1) has filed all reports required to be filed by Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the Registrant was required to file such reports), and (2) has been subject to such filing requirements for the past 90 days. YesxNo ̈
Indicate by check mark whether the Registrant has submitted electronically every Interactive Data File required to be submitted pursuant to Rule 405 of Regulation S-T (§232.405 of this chapter) during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the Registrant was required to submit such files). YesxNo ̈
Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a large accelerated filer, an accelerated filer, a non-accelerated filer, a smaller reporting company, or an emerging growth company. See the definitions of “large accelerated filer,” “accelerated filer,” “smaller reporting company,” and “emerging growth company” in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act.
Large accelerated filer ☒ Accelerated filer ☐
Non-accelerated filer ☐ Smaller reporting company ☒
Emerging growth company ☐
If an emerging growth company, indicate by check mark if the registrant has elected not to use the extended transition period for complying with any new or revised financial accounting standards provided pursuant to Section 13(a) of the Exchange Act. ☐
Indicate by check mark whether the registrant has filed a report on and attestation to its management’s assessment of the effectiveness of its internal control over financial reporting under Section 404(b) of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (15 U.S.C. 7262(b)) by the registered public accounting firm that prepared or issued its audit report ☒
Indicate by check mark whether the Registrant is a shell company (as defined in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act). YES ☐ NO x
The aggregate market value of the voting and non-voting common equity held by non-affiliates of the registrant as of June 30, 2021 (the last business day of the registrant’s most recently completed second fiscal quarter) was approximately $2,045,466,000 based on the closing price of the registrant’s common stock on June 30, 2021 of $7.33 per share, as reported by the Nasdaq Capital Market.
As of February 24, 2022, the Registrant had 289,612,949 shares of common stock, $0.0001 par value per share, outstanding.
DOCUMENTS INCORPORATED BY REFERENCE
Portions of the definitive proxy statement, or the Proxy Statement, for the Registrant’s 2022 Annual Meeting of Stockholders are incorporated by reference into Part III of this Annual Report on Form 10-K. The Proxy Statement will be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission within 120 days of the Registrant’s fiscal year ended December 31, 2021.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Page
PART I
Item 1. Business 4
Item 1A. Risk Factors 24
Item 1B. Unresolved Staff Comments 61
Item 2. Properties 61
Item 3. Legal Proceedings 62
Item 4. Mine Safety Disclosures 62
PART II
Item 6. [Reserved] 62
Item 7A. Quantitative and Qualitative Disclosures About Market Risk 70
Item 8. Financial Statements and Supplementary Data 70
Item 9A. Controls and Procedures 106
Item 9B. Other Information 108
Item 9C. Disclosure Regarding Foreign Jurisdictions that Prevent Inspections 108
PART III
Item 10. Directors, Executive Officers and Corporate Governance 108
Item 11. Executive Compensation 108
Item 14. Principal Accounting Fees and Services 108
PART IV
Item 15. Exhibits, Financial Statement Schedules 108
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As used in this Form 10-K, “Bionano,” the “Company,” “we,” “our,” and “us” refer to Bionano Genomics, Inc. and its subsidiaries or, as the context may require, Bionano Genomics, Inc. only. "Lineagen" and "BioDiscovery" refer to our wholly owned subsidiaries, Lineagen, Inc. and BioDiscovery, LLC.
Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements
This Annual Report on Form 10-K, or this Annual Report, contains forward-looking statements and information within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions for the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1955. All statements other than statements of historical facts contained in this Annual Report, including statements regarding our future results of operations or financial condition, business strategy and plans, and objectives of management for future operations, are forward-looking statements. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements because they contain words such as “anticipate,” “believe,” “contemplate,” “continue,” “could,” “estimate,” “expect,” “intend,” “may,” “plan,” “potential,” “predict,” “project,” “should,” “target,” “will” or “would” or the negative of these words or other similar terms or expressions.
We have based these forward-looking statements largely on our current expectations and projections about future events and financial trends that we believe may affect our financial condition, results of operations, business strategy and financial needs. These forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and assumptions, including risks described in the section entitled “Risk Factors” and elsewhere in this Annual Report, regarding, among other things:
•the size and growth potential of the markets for our products, and our ability to serve those markets;
•the rate and degree of market acceptance of our products;
•our ability to manage the growth of our business and integrate acquired businesses;
•our ability to expand our commercial organization to address effectively existing and new markets that we intend to target;
•the impact from future regulatory, judicial, and legislative changes or developments in the U.S. and foreign countries;
•our ability to successfully execute our strategy and meet anticipated goals and milestones
•our ability to compete effectively in a competitive industry;
•the introduction of competitive technologies or improvements in existing technologies and the success of any such technologies;
•the performance of our third-party contract sales organizations, suppliers and manufacturers;
•our ability to attract and retain key scientific or management personnel;
•the accuracy of our estimates regarding expenses, future revenues, reimbursement rates, capital requirements and needs for additional financing;
•the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our business and operations, as well as the business or operations of our suppliers, customers, manufacturers, research partners and other third parties with whom we conduct business and our expectations with respect to the duration of such impacts and the resulting effects on our business;
•we may not realize the anticipated benefits and synergies of our recent and any future acquisitions or other strategic transactions;
•our ability to obtain funding for our operations; and
•our ability to attract collaborators and strategic partnerships;
You should not rely on forward-looking statements as predictions of future events. The outcome of the events described in these forward-looking statements is subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors described in Part I, Item 1A Risk Factors and elsewhere in this Annual Report. Moreover, we operate in a very competitive and rapidly changing environment. New risks and uncertainties may emerge from time to time, and it is not possible for us to predict all risks and uncertainties that could have an impact on the forward-looking statements contained in this Annual Report.
The results, events and circumstances reflected in the forward-looking statements may not be achieved or occur, and actual results, events or circumstances could differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements.
In addition, statements that “we believe” and similar statements reflect our beliefs and opinions on the relevant subject. These statements are based on information available to us as of the date of this Annual Report. And while we believe that information provides a reasonable basis for these statements, that information may be limited or incomplete. Our statements should not be read to indicate that we have conducted an exhaustive inquiry into, or review of, all relevant information. These statements are inherently uncertain, and investors are cautioned not to unduly rely on these statements.
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The forward-looking statements made in this Annual Report relate only to events as of the date on which the statements are made. We undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statements made in this Annual Report to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this Annual Report or to reflect new information or the occurrence of unanticipated events, except as required by law. We may not actually achieve the plans, intentions, or expectations disclosed in our forward-looking statements, and you should not place undue reliance on our forward-looking statements. Our forward-looking statements do not reflect the potential impact of any future acquisitions, mergers, dispositions, joint ventures or investments.
RISK FACTOR SUMMARY
Below is a summary of the principal factors that make an investment in our securities speculative or risky. This summary does not address all of the risks that we face. Additional discussion of the risks and uncertainties summarized in this risk factor summary, and other risks and uncertainties that we face, are set forth below under the heading “Risk Factors” and should be carefully considered, together with other information in this Annual Report and our other filings with the SEC before making investment decisions regarding our securities.
•We are an early-commercial-stage company and have a limited commercial history, which may make it difficult to evaluate our current business and predict our future performance;
•We have incurred recurring net losses since we were formed and expect to incur losses in the future. We cannot be certain that we will achieve or sustain profitability;
•Our quarterly and annual operating results and cash flows have fluctuated in the past and might continue to fluctuate, which makes our future operating results difficult to predict and could cause the market price of our securities to decline substantially;
•Our business, and that of our customers, has been adversely affected by the effects of public health crises, including the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, the COVID-19 pandemic has materially affected our operations globally, including at our headquarters in San Diego, California, as well as the business or operations of our research partners, customers and other third parties with whom we conduct business. As a result, in some cases we have had to delay instrument installations or service-related visits.
•Our future capital needs are uncertain and we may require additional funding in the future to advance the commercialization of Saphyr, NxClinical and our other products, technologies, and services, as well as continue our research and development efforts. If we fail to obtain additional funding, we will be forced to delay, reduce or eliminate our commercialization and development efforts;
•Acquisitions, joint ventures and other strategic transactions could disrupt or otherwise harm our business and may cause dilution to our stockholders;
•If our products or technologies fail to achieve and sustain sufficient market acceptance, our revenue will be adversely affected;
•Our future success is dependent upon our ability to further penetrate our existing customer base and attract new customers;
•We are currently limited to “research use only” with respect to many of the materials and components used in our consumable products including our assays;
•In the near term, sales of our Saphyr system, the NxClinical software, our consumables and genome analysis services will depend on levels of research and development spending by clinical research laboratories, academic and governmental research institutions and biopharmaceutical companies, a reduction in which could limit demand for our technologies, products and adversely affect our business and operating results;
•If we do not successfully manage the development and launch of new products and technologies, our financial results could be adversely affected;
•If the FDA determines that our RUO products are medical devices or if we seek to market our RUO products for clinical diagnostic or health screening use, we will be required to obtain regulatory clearance(s) or approval(s), and may be required to cease or limit sales of our then marketed products, which could materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations. Any such regulatory process would be expensive, time-consuming and uncertain both in timing and in outcome;
•If we are unable to protect our intellectual property, it may reduce our ability to maintain any technological or competitive advantage over our competitors and potential competitors, and our business may be harmed; and
•The price of our securities may be volatile or may decline regardless of our operating performance, and you could lose all or part of your investment.
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PART I
ITEM 1. BUSINESS
Overview
We are a global genomics company focused on elevating the health and wellness of all people. We are pioneers of optical genome mapping, or OGM, for genome analysis and provide a suite of genome analysis solutions designed to enable researchers and clinicians to reveal answers to challenging questions in biology and medicine. Our mission is to transform the way the world sees the genome through OGM solutions, clinical testing and laboratory services and software. We offer OGM and software solutions for applications across applied, translational and clinical research and we offer diagnostic services to physicians specializing in medical management for individuals with genetic conditions such as pediatric neurodevelopmental disorders, or NDDs, including autism spectrum disorders, or ASDs.
We market and sell the Saphyr® system, which delivers OGM data to enable ultra-sensitive and ultra-specific detection of all classes of structural variation. The Saphyr system is used in clinical and discovery research to streamline the identification of structural changes in chromosomes, known as cytogenetics, and to accelerate the search for answers in genetic disease and cancer applications. The Saphyr system is comprised of an instrument, chip consumables, reagents and software containing a suite of data analysis and visualization tools. In addition to our Saphyr system and software products, we offer laboratory services to provide data generated by the Saphyr system to researchers seeking access to OGM data. The Saphyr system has been shown to outperform the current gold standard methods for cytogenetics and molecular genetics including karyotyping, fluorescence in-situ hybridization (FISH), Southern blot and chromosomal microarray. The Saphyr system has also been shown to identify structural changes in chromosomes that cannot be identified using current commercially available solutions for gene sequencing.
We provide proprietary molecular genetic clinical testing services for individuals demonstrating clinical presentations consistent with NDDs, including ASDs and other disorders of childhood development. Our comprehensive genetic testing services include reporting for known NDD-causing genome variations, including testing for proprietary variations, and combines testing with our Proprietary Variant Index (PRISM) which uses a proprietary database of over 35,000 individuals with NDDs tested with over 60,000 tests that provides additional evidence for candidate genes associated with NDDs. This testing is a CLIA-certified diagnostic testing service, and we have expertise in selling cytogenetic assays to physicians, providing genetic counseling services to individuals undergoing testing and their families, and contracting with third-party payors for reimbursement.
We also provide laboratory services to clinicians, scientists, pharmaceutical companies, and others who are seeking to incorporate OGM into their genomics research without the need to bring our Saphyr system in house. Laboratory services for OGM are performed in our laboratory facilities in San Diego and at partner laboratories in the United States and Europe, and serve as solutions for researchers and clinicians who would like to use OGM for various applications in genomics but have yet to acquire the Saphyr.
Our software solutions deliver genomic data interpretation solutions tailored for research use in cytogenomics and molecular pathology labs in genetic disease and cancer research markets, with an emphasis on structural variation. We offer an industry-leading, platform-agnostic software solution that can integrate OGM with next-generation sequencing, or NGS, and microarray data. This software solution is designed to provide analysis, visualization, interpretation and reporting of structural variants, single-nucleotide variants and absence of heterozygosity across the genome in one consolidated view. Our software currently enables analysis of NGS and microarray data, and we are developing a version that we expect to be able to incorporate OGM data to make our software a more comprehensive offering for analysis of genomic data. We believe the integration of OGM with data types common in the industry, such as Variant Call Format (VCF), and Binary Alignment Map (BAM), should accelerate and broaden our position in digital cytogenetics and comprehensive genome analysis by enabling us to simplify the assessment of clinically relevant variants in cytogenomics applications, potentially reducing interpretation time per sample and expanding our reach into the discovery and translational research markets through the combination of OGM and NGS data.
Over the past year, we believe we have transformed our business from an instrument company to a provider of a full suite of genomics solutions. We expanded into molecular genetic clinical testing services through our August 2020 acquisition of Lineagen Inc. Our recent expansion into software solutions was made possible by our October 2021 acquisition of BioDiscovery, LLC. We believe that these acquisitions, along with internal investments in research and development and the build out of our commercial teams, have positioned us well to make OGM standard of care for many constitutional genetic disorders and cancers.
Recent Highlights
Commercial Adoption of Offerings for Saphyr
Bionano executed on its commercialization strategy, expanded the utilization of its Saphyr system and increased the amount of Bionano data generated across the globe, driving scientific momentum.
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•Grew our installed base to 164 as of December 31, 2021, an increase of approximately 69% from a total installed base of 97 as of December 31, 2020. Installed base represents the global number of Saphyr instruments installed at end-customer locations and therefore ready to process optical genome mapping.
•Sold 3,204 flowcells in the fourth quarter of 2021, an increase of approximately 29% over the 2,484 flowcells sold during the fourth quarter of 2020. For the year ended December 31, 2021, total flowcells sold reached 12,518, an increase of approximately 98% over the 6,311 flowcells sold during the year ended December 31, 2020. The Saphyr chip is the consumable that packages nanochannel arrays for DNA linearization. In its current form, each Saphyr chip has three flowcells. Flowcells sold refers to the units of genome mapping consumables used for analyzing one genome, purchased by customers to process optical genome mapping.
Validated the Utility of OGM for Applications in Clinical Research with Benchmarking, Scientific Publication and Adoption
Rigorous and extensive benchmarking of Saphyr was conducted against traditional cytogenetic methods and long read sequencing and these results were published and validated in several key publications, presentations and announcements including:
•OGM demonstrated 100% concordance with karyotyping, FISH, and chromosomal microarray in constitutional disorders in two studies appearing in the August 2021 issue of the American Journal of Human Genetics;
•The authors in these back-to-back AJHG publications describe OGM as a better alternative to traditional cytogenetics assays for both inherited genetic disease and hematologic malignancy applications since it consolidates multiple antiquated methods requiring manual integration for interpretation into a single workflow with higher resolution for detection of all classes of structural variants.
•University Hospitals Leuven in Belgium, received its accreditation from the Belgian Accreditation Body (BELAC) for using OGM in analysis of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and showed significant improvements in cost and turnaround time relative to traditional techniques of FISH and MLPA.
•Published study by Johns Hopkins University in the Journal of Clinical & Anatomic Pathology outlining a stepwise approach to adoption of OGM for cancer analysis in their cytogenetics lab.
•A team from the University of Iowa published the largest clinical research study to date evaluating OGM for facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy (FSHD). The study, published in the Journal of Molecular Diagnostics, concluded that OGM can be performed quicker, more accurately, and more reproducibly than the current gold standard method of Southern blot analysis.
•Publication of a study and of 76 subjects by authors at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, which evaluated the utility of OGM as an alternative to traditional cytogenomic methods for the characterization of structural variation (SV) in myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS). The study was published in Blood, the journal of the American Society of Hematology (ASH) and presented at the 2021 ASH annual conference.
•Publication of a study from the International COVID-19 Host Genome Structural Variation Consortium, which is a global open host genome structural variation consortium for COVID-19 response. The consortium is comprised of over 30 researchers from leading institutions who are using OGM to assess structural variations in the human genome that could be contributing to COVID-19 susceptibility or progression. In this study, OGM was conducted on samples from 52 severely ill COVID-19 subjects to investigate structural variations as decisive predisposition factors associated with COVID-19. The researchers identified 7 structural variations in 9 subjects (17% of subjects analyzed) involving genes implicated in two key host-viral interaction pathways: innate immunity and inflammatory response, and viral replication and spread.
•Researchers from leading institutions in the US published in medRxiv the first readout from the ongoing multi-site clinical research study designed to support OGM as an alternative to traditional workflows in cytogenetics for postnatal inherited genetic disease. The IRB-approved clinical study evaluated 331 individual sample runs from 202 unique samples across five sites for interim measures of key endpoints:
◦Concordance with traditional techniques – 97.7% (214 out of 219 samples)
◦Partially concordant with traditional techniques – 2.3% (5 out of 219 samples)
◦Concordance with traditional techniques for pathogenic variant calls – 100% (219 out of 219 samples)
◦Concordance with chromosomal microarray (CMA) – 100% (103 out of 103 samples)
◦First-pass success rate for OGM – 94% (311 out of 331 samples)
◦Reproducibility of analytical QC from site-to-site – 98.8% (171 out of 173 replicates)
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◦Reproducibility of pathogenic variant calls from site-to-site – 100% (173 out of 173 replicates)
•Researchers from the Medical College of Georgia/Augusta University published a study that evaluated the performance and utility of combining OGM and a 523-gene NGS panel for comprehensive evaluation of myeloid tumors and compared it to standard cytogenetic methods (karyotyping and fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) and a 54-gene NGS panel. The combination of OGM and a 523-gene NGS panel is superior to standard methods and more cost effective than whole genome sequencing.
COVID-19 Overview
The COVID-19 pandemic, and the measures imposed to contain this pandemic in areas where we operate our business and elsewhere have disrupted and are expected to continue to impact our business. COVID-19 related disruptions to the global supply chain created and may continue to create challenges in our getting sufficient components and raw materials for production of our OGM systems and consumables. At various times throughout the pandemic, we have been unable to visit certain customer sites to support installation or service our OGM systems. In addition, study enrollment for clinical studies generally has been affected by COVID-19. While we have not experienced adverse effects on study enrollment, we may begin to as we continue to pursue clinical studies.
For a more detailed discussion of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on our business, see “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations - COVID-19.”
Industry Background
Genome analysis is the process of extracting and interpreting biological information from DNA and RNA. DNA is the code that is found in all living cells and determines the characteristics and health of all living organisms. Although each organism’s DNA order is unique, all DNA is composed of the same four nucleotides that come in pairs, which are referred to as base pairs. The human genome is composed of six billion of these base pairs (three billion of which are the maternal copy and three billion of which are the paternal copy of the genome), distributed across 23 pairs of chromosomes ranging in size from approximately 50 million to approximately 250 million base pairs. Genome variation is defined as at least one base pair differing in a comparison of sequence against a reference standard and can be as large as tens of millions of base pairs.
Genome structure refers to the way in which the various functional elements of the genome such as genes, reading frames, promoters and others are ordered, oriented and organized across the 23 pairs of chromosomes. Structural variations represent differences in the amount or location of genomic DNA from one individual compared to a reference genome. Structural variation is one of the most biologically important aspects of the human genome and is a major factor for the cause of genetic disorders and cancer. Each structural variation involves the rearrangement or repetition of as few as several hundred base pairs to as many as tens of millions of base pairs. Structural variations may be inherited or arise spontaneously. Structural variations are well-known to cause diseases such as constitutional genetic disorders and cancer. Many researchers and clinicians now agree that despite major advances in the speed and cost-effectiveness of DNA sequencing, it fails to reliably detect structural variations. OGM enables the detection of all classes of structural variants, and we believe no methodology exists that can detect structural variations more comprehensively or cost efficiently than OGM with the Saphyr system.
We believe the traditional cytogenomic methods of detecting structural variations for research and clinical applications, karyotyping, CMA, and fluorescent in situ hybridization, or FISH, are antiquated and cumbersome and can only detect a small proportion of the structural variations across an entire genome. OGM is designed to offer cytogeneticists the ability to fully digitize and replace these traditional methods with one simplified, cost effective and scalable workflow using the Saphyr system.
We believe that software is necessary for genome analysis and should be the primary interface for how cytogeneticists interact with the data and report their findings. We believe the software’s ease of use, core analysis functionality and the time necessary to obtain a reportable result are the most important factors to customers when considering a platform adoption decision and that data interpretation is typically a critical bottleneck in methods of genome analysis and therefore software is a key component in the entire workflow. The majority of software solutions on the market today have been developed with NGS as the primary application with the focus on the interpretation and reporting of single nucleotide variants (SNVs) instead of SVs. Our software solution, NxClinical, was developed with copy number variation as the core focus and has become established as an industry leading solution for interpretation and reporting of CNVs for CMA and NGS. To the extent we are successful in integrating OGM into NxClinical, we anticipate that our software will be the first software solution delivering a fully integrated interpretation capability for SVs from OGM as well as seamless integration with NGS, with the potential to enable complementary OGM and NGS workflows through one software solution.
Our Solutions
OGM Systems
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OGM is our proprietary approach to measuring genome structure and structural variation. The OGM workflow is novel, comprehensive, scalable, cost effective and highly differentiated. OGM data are currently generated using the Saphyr system, which directly measures sequence specific patterns (SSPs) along extremely long DNA molecules in an unbiased approach without any amplification. Using the SSPs, software constructs detailed physical map of the genome that accurately assigns the chromosomal location, order, orientation and quantity of sequence and in-turn, all the genome’s functional elements. We believe OGM is capable of comprehensive, cost effective and efficient detection of all classes of SVs and CNVs. Today, these structural variations cannot be reliably detected by genome sequencing. High throughput sequencers, of which there are approximately 16,000 currently installed worldwide, are reliable for detecting genomic differences involving a few base pairs or SNVs, which Saphyr does not identify. Sequencing, including NGS, cannot reliably detect the larger structural variations that our Saphyr system is designed to detect. Therefore, Saphyr may be adopted alongside this installed base of sequencers as a complement that is designed to give users the ability to see a much wider scope of genome variation from single bases of DNA to full chromosomes.
OGM was built upon four key elements:
•Extremely long molecules for analysis. The Saphyr system is capable of analyzing single molecules that are on average approximately 250,000 base pairs in length and can be as long as millions of base pairs. These lengths are over 1,000 times longer than the average read length with Illumina sequencing systems and approximately 10-20 times longer than the average read lengths with Pacific Biosciences of California, or PacBio, and Oxford Nanopore systems. We believe these long read lengths overcome the inherent challenges of genome complexity and are the key to Saphyr’s unprecedented sensitivity and specificity.
•Proprietary nanotechnology for massively parallel linearization and analysis of long molecules with single molecule imaging. Analyzing these extremely long chromosomal fragments required invention. We invented, patented, developed and commercialized nanochannel arrays to capture long single molecules of DNA from solution and unwind and linearize them for structural variation analysis. Each molecule is imaged separately, making it possible to deconvolute complex mixtures including haplotypes and heterogeneous tumors.
•DNA labeling chemistry specifically for physical mapping. The detailed analysis of SSPs we use is also highly unique and novel. Instead of identifying the sequence of every base pair in these long fragments, we label and detect SSPs or motifs that occur universally across every genome with an average frequency of approximately one site for every few thousand base pairs. The key to our method entails introducing fluorescent tags at the sequence-specific site using highly specific and robust enzymatic chemistry along the extremely long fragments. These fragments, stretched out in nanochannels, are then directly imaged allowing us to measure the distance between labels with high accuracy. The pattern of labels detected on all these fragments can then be related to the pattern of sequence motif sites in a reference genome for comparison. Changes in the pattern indicate structural variation.
•Bioinformatic tools for structural variation analysis. Finally, our approach includes a novel bioinformatics platform that we developed from the ground-up to take advantage of the unique benefits of our solution. It comprises proprietary algorithms for the construction of a structurally accurate physical map of the genome to assign structure. Physical maps of a test subject are then compared to a reference or other subjects in cross-mapping analysis that allows our system to detect genome wide structural variation, including the most complex balanced events.
The Saphyr system provides a solution for comprehensive structural variation analysis at a higher resolution than traditional techniques allowing for more answers that matter to be obtained in genetic disease and cancer applications. We believe that Saphyr is the only product capable of detecting structural variations at high sensitivity and specificity with a workflow that is cost-effective and time efficient.
Our customers include researchers and clinicians who seek to identify and understand the biological implications of genome variation. We believe that Saphyr can replace more traditional cytogenetic tools which are expensive, slow and labor-intense, with an advanced solution designed to simplify workflow, reduce cost, and increase assay success rates. We believe Saphyr has the potential to significantly increase success rates and provide more answers across a wide range of applications in genomics.
Testing and Laboratory Services
We offer tests that use CMA for evaluation of patients suspected of having certain genetic diseases, which is recommended by the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ACMG), the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), and the American Academy of Neurology (AAN), among other renowned societies. We are actively performing research to determine whether OGM with the Saphyr system can replace CMA as the front-line test for children with developmental disorders. As the scientific, peer-reviewed literature supports this claim, the coding entities such as CMS and the AMA would need to adopt the proper procedural codes to allow for insurance reimbursement of new testing methodologies before they become mainstream clinical diagnostic instruments. Importantly, OGM is expected to be able to detect full mutations consistent with fragile X syndrome, which is another front-line test for children, especially males, with autism spectrum disorder and intellectual disability. Studies are ongoing to determine the sensitivity and specificity for OGM as it relates to fragile X syndrome. We also
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employ Whole Exome Sequencing (WES), which aims to detect genome SNVs that are different from genome structural variations and are not detectable by OGM.
We believe we are uniquely positioned to develop LDT’s that can improve upon the existing standards of care for diagnostic testing for NDDs. We have an established channel to work with payers to secure reimbursement alternatives for Saphyr-based testing. If reimbursements can be established, we intend to share our strategies with our customers to drive demand for the Saphyr system. We plan to expand our testing menu with inclusion of OGM to demonstrate workflow implementation in a clinical setting in order to drive adoption as well as serve as a conduit for enabling access for those customers unable to make a capital equipment expenditure. Our goal is to enable access, demonstrate excellence of the OGM workflow as a model within a CLIA setting for educational purposes, drive advancements in product development for clinical grade testing of OGM at scale.
Software Solutions
We offer industry leading genome analysis software that enables genomics labs to analyze and interpret data across a wide range of platforms to generate highly informative data visualizations for streamlined and simple reporting of causal variants. Today, NxClinical software is among the most comprehensive solutions for analysis and interpretation of any microarray or NGS generated data integrating copy number variants (CNVs), absence of heterozygosity (AOH) and loss of heterozygosity (LOH), as well as SNVs from sequencing data into a single well integrated interface that is used across the globe by renowned academic and commercial clinical laboratories.
Our acquisition of BioDiscovery has expanded our portfolio into providing data analysis and interpretation solutions across NGS, CMA and OGM. These software solutions are expected to allow us to leverage and expand our network of Bionano customers and to potentially enable future adoption of OGM.We believe integrating OGM data into NxClinical should substantially improve the analysis and reporting capabilities of our current Saphyr system, making OGM easier to adopt and use by our customers. Through BioDiscovery, we can now serve the NGS and array markets directly though software with an industry leading data interpretation solution for revealing more answers with delivery of copy number variants across the genome. Our software monetization strategy is predicated on a pay-per-sample model where customers running NGS and/or array today can adopt, which sets the stage for future OGM adoptions. Software is a way for us to participate directly in the NGS market while also enabling OGM data to be seamlessly integrated with NGS in one view for a comprehensive analysis, which is unique to Bionano.
Our Commercial Offerings
The Saphyr System and Consumables
We develop and market the Saphyr system, a complete sample-to-result solution for structural variation analysis by OGM that empowers comprehensive genome analysis and facilitates a deeper understanding of genetic variation and function. We believe the Saphyr system is capable of addressing the needs for structural variation analysis because it is:
•Highly sensitive. We believe Saphyr is the most sensitive detector of structural variations larger than 500 base pairs currently on the market.
•Cost effective. The consumables cost per genome, at an average of approximately $500, can be less than the combination of standard techniques and well below both short-read and long-read WGS at a depth of 160x coverage.
•Scalable and fast. Relative to traditional techniques, Saphyr has demonstrated up to a 75% reduction in turnaround time for analysis of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) subjects when used instead of karyotyping, FISH and MLPA.
The Saphyr Instrument
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The Saphyr instrument is a single-molecule imager that includes high performance optics, automated sample loading based on machine learning algorithms and computational hardware and control software. The instrument’s high-performance optics simultaneously image DNA linearized in hundreds of thousands of nanochannels. The instrument’s control interface is the user’s primary control center to design and monitor experiments as they occur in real time. The computational hardware is responsible for the secondary processing of the image data being produced on the Saphyr. The Saphyr instrument is currently capable of analyzing up to 5,000 human genomes per year at 30x coverage. At the end of 2021 we announced the completion of a prototype currently in development that is expected to significantly increase the throughput.
The Saphyr Chip
The Saphyr Chip® is the consumable that packages the nanochannel arrays for DNA linearization. In its current form, each Saphyr chip has three flow cells containing approximately 120,000 nanochannels that are roughly 30 nanometers wide, and each flowcell can hold one unique sample. To manufacture the arrays, we use photolithography in a semiconductor fabrication facility to print hundreds of thousands of tiny grooves on silicon wafers and then dice the wafers into individual chips. Our chips are inexpensive to manufacture and highly scalable. The fluidic environment in each channel allows individual molecules to move swiftly utilizing only the charge of DNA. Hundreds of thousands of molecules can move through hundreds of thousands of parallel nanochannels simultaneously, enabling extremely high-throughput processing on a single-molecule basis.
Saphyr Sample Prep and Labeling Kits
Our Bionano Prep KitsTM and DNA labeling kits provide the reagents and protocols needed to extract and label ultra-high molecular weight, or UHMW, DNA for use with the Saphyr system. These kits are optimized for performing our genome mapping applications on a variety of sample types.
Our workflow begins with the isolation of ultra-high molecular weight DNA. Our sample prep kits are optimized for isolating and purifying ultra-high molecular weight DNA in a process that is gentler than existing DNA extraction methods. The resulting purified DNA is millions of base pairs long and optimal for use with our systems. Each Bionano Prep Kit allows customers to perform five to 10 HMW DNA preps. Our kits and protocols enable the extraction of HMW DNA from a variety of sample types including human or animal tissue and tumors, plant tissue, cell lines, bone marrow aspirates and human blood.
Our labeling reagents are optimized for applications on our genome mapping systems. Starting with HMW DNA purified using the appropriate Bionano Prep Kit, fluorescent labels are attached to specific sequence motifs. The result is uniquely identifiable genome-specific label patterns that enable de novo map assembly, anchoring sequencing contigs and discovery of structural variations as small as 500 base pairs to up to chromosome arm lengths.
Our kit for DNA labeling, the Direct Label and Stain (DLS) kit, is a proprietary, nondestructive chemistry for sequence motif labeling of genomic DNA that improves every aspect of our genome mapping. DLS uses a single direct-labeling enzymatic reaction to attach a fluorophore to the DNA at a specific 6-base pair sequence motif, yielding approximately 16 labels per 100,000 base pairs in the human genome. After labeling, the molecules are linearized in the Saphyr chip on the Saphyr instrument and imaged. Through the isolation, labeling and linearization steps, the molecules maintain an average length of around 250,000 base pairs. The label patterns on each molecule allow them to be uniquely identified and aligned in a pair-wise comparison against all other molecules imaged from the same sample.
Software Solutions
Our data solutions offering includes a complete suite of hardware and software for end-to-end experiment management, algorithms for assembling genome maps and algorithms and databases for bioinformatics processing, all of which is driven through convenient web-based management and monitoring tools.
We have a suite of proprietary algorithms and databases that fully enable our proprietary bioinformatic and structural variation analysis pipelines. Using pairwise alignment of the single molecule images, consensus genome maps are constructed, refined, extended and merged. Molecules are then clustered into two alleles, and a diploid assembly is created to allow for heterozygous
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structural variation detection. Genome maps typically span entire chromosome arms in single, contiguous maps. Comparative analysis of maps reveals structural variation. Our customers use our variant annotation workflow to specifically uncover rare and sample-specific mutations.
Our hardware solution includes the Saphyr Compute Server, which provides cluster-like performance in an affordable, compact solution and the Bionano Compute Server, which expands the analytical capacity of the suite of tools. With these solutions, our customers are capable of performing multiple simultaneous analyses and sustaining continuous throughput, which allows them to spend less time waiting for data, so they can focus on investigating results. We also offer a cloud-based solution for data analysis.
NxClinical is among the most comprehensive and up-to-date solutions for cytogenetics and molecular genetics, providing one system for analysis and interpretation of all genomic variants from microarray and NGS data. We are developing a version of NxClinical to incorporate OGM data, which is expected to become our software solution once completed.
Testing and Laboratory Services
Through Bionano Labs, we offer OGM data to researchers seeking access to OGM data. We intend to build a menu of LDT’s on Saphyr to demonstrate the capabilities of OGM.
FirstStepDx PLUS is a CMA designed to identify an underlying genetic cause in individuals with autism spectrum disorder, developmental delay, and intellectual disability.
Fragile X syndrome (FXS) testing is designed to detect individuals (both males and females) with FXS, as well as carriers of the condition.
NextStepDx PLUS is a whole exome sequencing test designed to identify genetic variants that are associated with disorders of childhood development.
EpiPanelDx PLUS is a genetic testing panel designed for patients who have experienced seizures, infantile spasms, encephalopathy, or febrile seizures.
PGx test identifies over 60 alleles in 11 genes. PGx testing is one aspect of personalized medicine and is used to aid health care providers with medications and dosage.
Market Opportunity
According to Markets and Markets, the worldwide market for genomics products and services is expected to reach approximately $54.4 billion by 2025, up from approximately $22.7 billion in 2020, representing a compound annual growth rate of 19%.
We believe the two areas of the genomics market that are driving demand for the Saphyr System are:
•Consolidation of traditional cytogenetics techniques in constitutional and cancer applications. To provide a robust clinical analysis, cytogenetic assays detect known structural variations that are linked to specific diseases or therapeutic responses. The technologies used for detecting structural variations are expensive and involve cumbersome workflows with relatively limited ability to scale to higher volumes or more complex testing panels. Sequencers tend not to be used for cytogenetics due to their inability to reliably detect structural variations. Cytogenetics laboratories are beginning to adopt Saphyr as a more effective, scalable and efficient approach to finding the structural variations causative to genetic diseases and cancer. For this segment, Saphyr is used alone tool for providing comprehensive and accurate detection of all classes of structural variations and enable clinically relevant calls without the need for any sequencing or legacy cytogenetic technology. We estimate that approximately 2,500 cytogenetics labs exist worldwide.
•Combining OGM with sequencing for molecular genetics and discovery research applications. In discovery research across patient cohorts, sequencing is primarily used to find SNVs responsible for disease or therapeutic response. Sequencing alone, however, is significantly limited due to its inability to reveal structural variations. Our Saphyr system has been expanding this market segment by complementing sequencing to expand the scope of genome variation that can be analyzed in studies to achieve a more comprehensive view of the genome.
We estimate that the current worldwide discovery research and cytogenetics segments together comprise an addressable opportunity for us to sell up to an aggregate of approximately 10,000 OGM-based instruments, representing a total instrument market opportunity of approximately $2.1 billion.
In addition to the instrument sales opportunity, our OGM-based instruments generate recurring revenue from chip consumables and reagents that are used on a per-sample basis. We believe estimate that each of our OGM-based instruments has the potential to create recurring revenue from chip consumable sales in a range of between $70,000 to approximately $175,000 per year, suggesting a potential annual recurring revenue from chip consumable sales opportunity between approximately $0.7 billion to
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approximately $1.7 billion. We have based this estimated annual recurring revenue opportunity for chip consumable sales on anticipated customer and an assumed price of $500 per chip consumable and sample prep and labeling kit.
We believe that if our OGM-based instruments can successfully penetrate these addressable market opportunities, this should spur additional basic and translational research creating new areas where Saphyr (or successor instruments) and OGM data can be used to improve the standard of care and patient management. These may include preconception, products of conception and prenatal genetic applications, uses to advance gene editing techniques and precision medicine. In the long term, we anticipate potential opportunities in population screening, newborn screening, biopharma applications in cell quality control and oncology.
Our current market opportunity estimates for total OGM-based instrument sales and annual recurring revenue from chip consumable sales are forward-looking statements and are subject to significant risks and uncertainties. While these were prepared in good faith, we cannot provide assurances as to future results or events. These estimates are based on third-party market research data and our future outlook, which is dependent in principal part on anticipated demand for OGM instruments, complementary capabilities of OGM and NGS, expected consumption of chips and sample prep and labeling kits. In particular, these estimates are based on current and projected selling prices for instruments and consumables, each of which is subject to change over time. These estimates and assumptions underlying our addressable market opportunities involve significant judgments with respect to, among other things, future economic, competitive, regulatory, market and financial conditions, as well as future customer demand, business decisions and corporate opportunities that may not be realized, and that are inherently subject to significant business, economic, competitive and regulatory risks and uncertainties, all of which are difficult to predict and many of which are outside of our control. Our underlying assumptions and estimates may prove to be inaccurate and our financial objectives may not be realized, and therefore our actual results may differ materially from these estimated addressable market opportunities. In addition, these addressable opportunities should not be construed as financial guidance and should not otherwise be relied upon as being necessarily indicative of future results, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these estimated addressable opportunities. In preparing these estimated addressable opportunities, we have relied upon and assumed, without independent verification, the accuracy and completeness of certain industry and market information provided to us by third parties or through publicly available sources, which information involves assumptions and limitations, and you should not give undue weight to such information.
We have established relationships with key opinion leaders in genomics research and clinical applications, including rare diseases and oncology, including some of the world’s most prominent clinical, translational research, basic research, academic and government institutions as well as leading pharmaceutical and diagnostic companies. Examples include Quest Diagnostics, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, MD Anderson Cancer Center, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, Columbia University Medical Center, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University, Children’s National Health System, Boston Children’s Hospital, PerkinElmer, Praxis Genomics, Garvan Institute of Medical Research, McDonnell Genome Institute at Washington University, National Institutes of Health, Pennsylvania State University, Radboud University Medical Center and Salk Institute for Biological Studies.
Our Strategy
We are primarily focused on driving adoption of OGM through the Saphyr system. Our goal is to streamline structural variant identification and enable new research in genomics to allow greater insight into their role in human health in ways that have not been possible with any other current research and diagnostic technologies.
Our strategy to achieve this includes:
•Demonstrate that Saphyr is a superior alternative to traditional techniques in constitutional genetic disorders and hematologic malignancy applications. Optical genome mapping has demonstrated superior detection sensitivity for all classes of structural variants relative to karyotyping, FISH and CMA in numerous peer-reviewed publications over the last year and offers benefits of improved assay success rates, faster time to result and a lower total cost. The value proposition and competitive differentiation for OGM in cytogenetics market is exceptionally strong with an immediate opportunity to digitize legacy microscope techniques (karyotyping) with a superior approach using Saphyr. Since the cytogenetics market understands the importance of structural variants and these genomic variants are the basis of this medical discipline, we believe the cytogenetics market is well poised as the entry point for global expansion.
•Complement NGS with OGM in translational, applied and discovery research markets. We believe the combination of NGS and OGM can provide the most comprehensive and cost-effective analysis of genome variants from SNVs to whole chromosomes. NGS is an accurate technique for measuring genome variants below 500 bp while OGM bridges the gap by enabling detection of all structural variants above 500 bp to reveal more answers and resolve previously unresolved cases from using NGS alone. There are over 15,000 NGS instruments installed globally and for each of these sequencers our vision is to complement with a mapper in Saphyr to provide a more comprehensive picture of the genome for more discoveries, publications and translation into molecular genetics.
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•Accelerate broad reimbursement for OGM and establish it as the standard of care in guidelines by professional medical societies. We are investing in four multi-center clinical studies for postnatal, prenatal, hematologic malignancies and solid tumor analyses relative to standard of care. Each study is designed with an expectation for recruitment of 1,000 subjects and will assess sensitivity, specificity, reproducibility, concordance and incremental clinically relevant findings relative to standard of care. We are investing in these programs to build the necessary evidence to establish reimbursement and to pave the way for inclusion in professional society guidelines to advance standard of care. The first preliminary readout from the multicenter postnatal study was published in December 2021.
•Support the publication of findings with OGM by our customers beyond the more than 340 papers published to date. The annual number of publications featuring data generated by Saphyr and its predecessor system has steadily increased since 2010 when the first publication appeared. Recently, the overall number of these publications has grown significantly. For example, of the 340 peer-reviewed and pre-print papers published since 2019, 161 were published in 2021 alone. We intend to continue to support and foster our customer base to help grow the number of publications featuring our systems’ data. We believe that these publications are impactful as our customers’ studies cover structural variations in areas of high unmet medical need, such as rare and undiagnosed pediatric diseases, neurological and muscular diseases, developmental delays and disorders, prostate cancer and leukemia.
•Continue to innovate our products and technologies. We designed Saphyr to accommodate performance enhancements without the need for replacement of the entire instrument. For example, hardware upgrades and new consumables are made available to purchase by customers. We intend for these performance enhancements to be delivered on a regular basis. In addition, we periodically make available software upgrades to customers through download at no charge. We expect to continue developing and refining our technologies to improve the ease of use of our Saphyr system and enable our existing installed systems to meaningfully increase sample throughput and sensitivity and specificity of structural variation detection. A high throughput version is currently in development that is expected to significantly increase the throughput and lower the cost per sample. Compared to the Saphyr system, which images DNA at a rate of approximately 205 Gbp per hour, the new system is expected to image nearly 820 Gbp per hour and we announced the completion of this protype at the end of 2021.
•Partner with industry-leading companies and laboratories to expand adoption in clinical markets. Establish additional collaborations with customers to help drive validating studies. Expand partnership efforts with clinical diagnostic companies to commercialize LDTs in the U.S. as well as LDTs and approved tests outside the U.S.
Sales and Marketing
As of December 31, 2021, our commercial team consisted of 152 individuals in sales, sales support and marketing. Our sales support personnel include individuals in customer solutions, field service engineers and field application specialists. This commercial staff is primarily located in North America, Europe, and China. Most of our sales support team is located at our headquarters in San Diego and some work remotely throughout the U.S., Europe, and China.
We sell our products through a direct sales force based in North America and Europe. Our sales strategy involves the use of a combination of sales managers and sales representatives. We expect to increase our sales force as we expand our business.
We sell our products through a network of distributors in the Asia-Pacific region and select other markets outside of North America and Europe. Specifically, we distribute our instruments and reagents via third-party distributors in markets such as China, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Australia, India and South Africa. Three of our distributors are in China, one in Australia, one in Italy, one in Sweden, one in Japan and one in South Korea.
The role of our sales managers and sales representatives is to educate customers on the advantages of Saphyr and the applications that our system makes possible. The role of our field application specialists is to provide on-site training and scientific technical support to prospective and existing customers. Our field application specialists are technical experts with advanced degrees, including seven with PhDs., and generally have extensive experience in academic research and core sequencing lab experience.
In addition, we maintain an applications lab team in San Diego, California composed of scientific experts who can transfer knowledge from the research and development team to the field application specialists. The applications lab team also runs foundational scientific collaborations and proof of principle studies, which help demonstrate the value of our product offering to prospective customers. This team also provides commercial services by running samples on Saphyr for researchers who do not have a Saphyr system of their own.
We intend to expand our sales, support, and marketing efforts in the future by expanding our direct footprint in North America and Europe as well as developing a more comprehensive support network in China where significant market opportunities exist. Additionally, we believe that there is significant opportunity in other European, South American, Asia-Pacific and Middle Eastern regions. We plan to expand into these regions via initial penetration with distributors.
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Our systems are relatively new to the life science marketplace and require a capital investment by our customers. The sales process typically involves numerous interactions and demonstrations with multiple people within an organization. Some potential customers conduct in-depth evaluations of the system including having us run experiments on in-house Saphyr systems. In addition, in most countries, sales to academic or governmental institutions require participation in a tender process involving preparation of extensive documentation and a lengthy review process. Because of these factors and the budget cycles of our customers, our sales cycle, the time from initial contact with a customer to our receipt of a purchase order, can often be nine to 12 months.
We primarily sell our suite of LDTs to pediatric physicians through a physician-directed “in-person” sales model. This commercial staff is located in North America, and the sales personnel primarily work remotely in U.S. states where we have obtained insurance reimbursement. Our sales and marketing efforts are targeted primarily on specialty pediatricians, including pediatric neurologists, medical geneticists, and developmental and behavioral pediatricians. We also target general pediatricians with large numbers of patients. Our managed care efforts are directed to establishing contracts and/or credentialing with private and governmental insurance carriers that provide coverage for patients with ASD and other forms of NDDs.
Instruments
Our instruments are manufactured by a third-party medical device manufacturer. Nearly complete instruments are shipped by the manufacturer to us for final assembly and quality control testing. Upon completion, we ship directly to our customers’ locations globally, or distributors’ locations in the case of certain systems sold in the Asia-Pacific region. Installation of, and training on, our products is provided by our employees in the markets where we conduct direct sales, and by distributors in those markets where we operate with distributors.
We believe this manufacturing strategy is efficient and conserves capital. However, in the event it becomes necessary to utilize a different contract manufacturer, we would experience additional costs, delays and difficulties in doing so, and our business could be harmed. This manufacturer actively manages obsolescence of all components in our system. This is done through their supply management process where we get notified of any parts that will become obsolete with enough lead time to identify alternatives.
Consumables
All our chip consumables are produced by a third-party manufacturer at its facility; however, we have established procedures for a replacement manufacturer if required. We complete final assembly and quality control assessments of our chips at our headquarters in San Diego.
Our reagents are sourced from a limited number of suppliers, including certain single source suppliers. Reagents include all components required to run a sample on OGM, such as capture and detector reagents, enzyme reagents and enzyme substrate. Although we believe that alternatives would be available, it would take time to identify and validate replacement reagents for our assay kits, which could negatively affect our ability to supply assay kits on a timely basis. Reagents are supplied through a single source supplier. This supplier requires a sufficient notification period to allow for supply continuity and the identification and technology transfer to a new supplier in the event either party wishes to terminate the relationship.
We actively manage component obsolescence by subscribing to our vendors’ end-of-life notifications. If a vendor is unable to provide sufficient notification, we keep safety stock of the component to minimize disruption to operations.
Manufacturing and Supply
Our manufacturing strategy is to outsource instrument and chip manufacturing and internally develop and assemble reagent kits in our own facility.
Software
Our fundamental long-term software strategy is based on our goal of making OGM ubiquitous with increased utilization through simplified data interpretation and a seamless integration with NGS and array data to provide the most compressive genome analysis. In addition, we can participate directly in the NGS and array markets for genetic disease and cancer applications independent of OGM using a monetization model with a pay-per-sample NxClinical software offering. In this manner we can expand our network of Bionano customers into our software ecosystem with among the most comprehensive platform-agnostic genome interpretation solution where our proprietary original content in OGM can be adopted when needed to obtain a more comprehensive view of the genome by revealing all classes of structural variants. We plan on continuing to enable OGM users with the full solution with software at no additional charge while we monetize the per sample utilization for NGS.
Testing and Laboratory Services
Bionano Labs OGM testing is performed at our lab in San Diego, or at our partner labs in the United States and Europe. We intend to increase our testing capacity, expand our menu of testing, and pursue CLIA certification for the San Diego lab.
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For diagnostic testing currently through our Lineagen subsidiary, we maintain contracts with a network of laboratories to perform the wet work on our various LDT tests in order to conserve capital and maintain flexibility of adjusting contract lab based on the best-in-class/most updated technology and customer service. As of December 31, 2021, we have established contracts with two primary laboratories to perform wet lab services. All third-party laboratories have met stringent criteria, including passing a site visit from our management, and being CAP and CLIA-certified. We obtain raw data from laboratories for interpretation and reporting. Our short-term strategy is to augment our existing test menu with OGM based LDT’s. Eventually, we intend to convert these tests to OGM.
Key Agreements
License Agreement with Princeton University
In January 2004, we entered into a license agreement, or the License Agreement, with Princeton University, or Princeton. Pursuant to the License Agreement, we received a worldwide, exclusive right and license to, among other things, manufacture and market products or services utilizing patents and inventions related to our sample preparation, DNA imaging and genomic data analysis platform and other key technology.
We are obligated to pay Princeton an annual license maintenance fee in the mid-four digits, which can be reduced by royalties paid to Princeton during the preceding 12 month period. We are also obligated to make royalty payments to Princeton equal to (i) a percentage in the mid-single digits of our and any of our sub-licensees’ net sales of products covered by the License Agreement and (ii) a percentage in the low-single digits of our and any of our sub-licensees’ revenue from services covered by the License Agreement. Our royalty obligations continue on a licensed product-by-licensed product and licensed service-by-licensed service basis, in every country of the world, until the later of the last sale of a licensed product or service or the expiration of all Princeton patent rights.
The term of the License Agreement will continue until all of our royalty payment obligations have expired, unless terminated earlier. Princeton may terminate the License Agreement upon written notice in the event of our material breach of the License Agreement if such breach remains uncured for 60 days. We may terminate the License Agreement without cause upon 60 days’ advance written notice to Princeton.
Agreement for the Manufacture of Our Instruments
We have engaged a single third-party manufacturer to produce and test our instruments on an as-ordered basis. The manufacturer of our instruments has no obligation to manufacture our instruments without a purchase order. In addition, this manufacturer has no obligation to maintain inventory in excess of any open purchase orders or materials in excess of the amount it reasonably determines will be consumed within 90 days. We are obligated to purchase any material deemed in excess pursuant to the agreement. The price we pay is determined according to a mutually agreed-upon pricing formula. We may terminate a purchase order by giving the manufacturer at least 30 days’ written notice.
Agreement for the Manufacture of Our Chip Consumables
We have engaged a single third-party manufacturer to manufacture our chip consumables used in our Saphyr system and provide engineering services to us. This third-party has no obligation to manufacture our chip consumables without a purchase order. The prices and fees we pay are established in our agreement with this manufacturer or determined by the manufacturer pursuant if supported by appropriate information. Our agreement with this manufacturer automatically renews for successive one year terms unless a party notifies the other party in writing at least 30 days prior to the expiration of the then-current term. We may terminate an order of the agreement at any time upon 30 days’ written notice.
Intellectual Property
Genome Analysis
Our core technology for nucleic acid research is related to methods and devices for non-sequencing based analysis of macromolecules such as nucleic acids. Using this technology, long (high-molecular weight) nucleic acids can be suitably labeled and elongated in order to ascertain structural information such as scaffold organization, copy number, and genomic repeats that is not readily obtained with current sequencing-based approaches. We have secured and continue to pursue intellectual property rights globally, including rights related to analysis of nucleic acid molecules, as well as innovations in the molecular biology and bioinformatics spaces.
We have developed a global patent portfolio that includes 101 issued patents or allowed applications across 26 patent families and an exclusively licensed portfolio of patents and applications from Princeton University, which includes 35 patents across two families. The global patent portfolio owned and licensed by us has effective filing dates ranging from 2001 to 2018. The owned and licensed patent families contain issued patents and pending applications that relate to devices, systems, and methods for macromolecular analysis, genetic testing, computer software systems and reflect our active and ongoing research programs.
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In addition to pursuing patents, we have taken steps to protect our intellectual property and proprietary technology by entering into confidentiality agreements and intellectual property assignment agreements with our employees, consultants, corporate partners and, as applicable, advisors.
Diagnostic Services
Lineagen, Inc. has registered trademarks to certain of its genetic testing services and a patent portfolio of patent applications that relate to diagnostic tests and methods to diagnose or predict disease by detecting one or more of ASD-associated CNVs, methods for assessing the presence or absence of a chromosomal deletion or duplication syndrome and methods of selecting patients for treatment based on such assessments, probe compositions, and related PCR-based methods of diagnosis by detecting ASD-associated SNPs and / or CNVs, methods for treating Wolf-Hirschhorn syndrome (4P- syndrome) seizures with cannabidiol or with vitamin B6 combination in patients with deletion of particular seizure susceptibility region, and has exclusively licensed a method of identifying a genome sequence mutation that is linked to causality of a disease using computer program product from The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) in in Toronto, Canada.
Software
BioDiscovery has over 25 years of experience in development of software and algorithms for analysis, visualization, and interpretation of genomic data. It has amassed a large base of commercial grade code along with expertise in multi-modal data integration with specific methods for copy number analysis. In addition to patents for microarray array data and image analysis, it has developed CNV segmentation algorithms called SNP-Rank and Fast Adaptive State Segmentation Technology (FASST). Additionally, the company BioDiscovery invented the Multi-Scale Reference (MSR) algorithm for CNV detection from NGS data.
Government Regulation
Our business is subject to and impacted by extensive and frequently changing laws and regulations in the United States (at both the federal and state levels) and internationally. These include laws and regulations particular to our business and laws and regulations relating to conducting business generally (e.g., export controls laws, U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and similar laws of other jurisdictions). We also are subject to inspections and audits by governmental agencies. Set forth below are highlights of certain key regulatory schemes applicable to our business. Below are discussions concerning government regulation of our Optical Genome Mapping, or OGM, products and services and, separately, our Diagnostic Services.
Optical Genome Mapping
Our OGM products are currently intended for research use only, or RUO, applications, although our customers may use our products to develop their own products that are subject to regulation by the FDA. Although most products intended for RUO are not currently subject to clearance or approval by the FDA, RUO products fall under the FDA’s jurisdiction if they are used for clinical rather than research purposes. Consequently, our products are labeled “For Research Use Only.”
The FDA’s 2013 Guidance for Industry and Food and Drug Administration Staff on “Distribution of In Vitro Diagnostic Products Labeled for Research Use Only or Investigational Use Only,” or, the RUO/IUO Guidance, provides the FDA’s thinking on when IVD products are properly labeled for RUO or for IUO. The RUO/IUO Guidance explains that the FDA will review the totality of the circumstances when evaluating whether equipment and testing components are properly labeled as RUO. Merely including a labeling statement that a product is intended for research use only will not necessarily exempt the device from the FDA’s 510(k) clearance, premarket approval, or other requirements, if the circumstances surrounding the distribution of the product indicate that the manufacturer intends its product to be used for clinical diagnostic use. These circumstances may include written or verbal marketing claims or links to articles regarding a product’s performance in clinical applications, a manufacturer’s provision of technical support for clinical validation or clinical applications, or solicitation of business from clinical laboratories, all of which could be considered evidence of intended uses that conflict with RUO labeling.
When marketed for clinical diagnostic use, our products will be regulated by the FDA as medical devices. The FDA defines a medical device in part as an instrument, apparatus, implement, machine, contrivance, implant, in vitro reagent, or other similar or related article which is intended for the diagnosis of disease or other conditions or in the cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease in man. FDA regulates the development, testing, manufacturing, marketing, post-market surveillance, distribution, advertising and labeling of medical devices. The FDA also requires the device to be registered by the medical device manufacturer and listed as a marketed product.
The FDA classifies medical devices into one of three classes on the basis of the intended use of the device, the risk associated with the use of the device for that indication, as determined by the FDA, and on the controls deemed by the FDA to be necessary to reasonably ensure their safety and effectiveness. Class I devices, which have the lowest level of risk associated with them, are subject to general controls. Class II devices are subject to general controls and special controls, including performance standards. Class III devices, which have the highest level of risk associated with them, are subject to general controls and premarket approval. Most Class I devices and some Class II devices are exempt from a requirement that the manufacturer submit a premarket notification, or 510(k), and receive clearance from the FDA which is otherwise a
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premarketing requirement for a Class II device. Class III devices may not be commercialized until a premarket approval application, or PMA, is submitted to and approved by the FDA.
510(k) Clearance Pathway
To obtain 510(k) clearance, a sponsor must submit to the FDA a premarket notification demonstrating that the device is substantially equivalent, or SE, to a device legally marketed in the U.S. for which a PMA was not required. The FDA is supposed to make a SE determination within 90 days of FDA’s receipt of the 510(k), but it often takes longer if the FDA requests additional information. Most 510(k)s do not require supporting data from clinical trials, but the FDA may request such data.
Premarket Approval Pathway
A PMA must be submitted if a new device cannot be cleared through the 510(k) process. The PMA process is generally more complex, costly and time consuming than the 510(k) process. A PMA must be supported by extensive data including, but not limited to, technical, preclinical, clinical trials, manufacturing and labeling to demonstrate to the FDA’s satisfaction the safety and effectiveness of the device for its intended use. After a PMA is sufficiently complete, the FDA will accept the application for filing and begin an in-depth review of the submitted information. By statute, the FDA has 180 days to review the accepted application, although, review of the application generally can take between one and three years. During this review period, the FDA may request additional information or clarification of information already provided. Also during the review period, an advisory panel of experts from outside the FDA may be convened to review and evaluate the application and provide recommendations to the FDA as to the approvability of the device. In addition, the FDA will conduct a preapproval inspection of the manufacturing facility to ensure compliance with its quality system regulations, or QSRs. New premarket approval applications or premarket approval application supplements are also required for product modifications that affect the safety and efficacy of the device.
Clinical Trials
Clinical trials are usually required to support a PMA and are sometimes required for a 510(k). In the U.S., if the device is determined to present a “significant risk,” the manufacturer may not begin a clinical trial until it submits an investigational device exemption application, or IDE, and obtains approval of the IDE from the FDA. These clinical trials are also subject to the review, approval and oversight of an institutional review board, or IRB, at each clinical trial site. The clinical trials must be conducted in accordance with the FDA’s IDE regulations and good clinical practices. A clinical trial may be suspended by the FDA, the sponsor or an IRB at its institution at any time for various reasons, including a belief that the risks to the study participants outweigh the benefits of participation in the trial. Even if a clinical trial is completed, the results may not demonstrate the safety and efficacy of a device to the satisfaction of the FDA, or may be equivocal or otherwise not be sufficient to obtain approval of a device.
After a medical device is placed on the market, numerous regulatory requirements apply. These include among other things:
•Compliance with QSRs, which require manufacturers to follow stringent design, testing, control, documentation, record maintenance, including maintenance of complaint and related investigation files, and other quality assurance controls during the manufacturing process;
•Reporting of device malfunctions, serious injuries or deaths;
•Registration of the establishments where the devices are produced;
•Labeling regulations, which prohibit the promotion of products for uncleared or unapproved uses; and
•Medical device reporting obligations, which require that manufacturers investigate and report to the FDA adverse events, including deaths, or serious injuries that may have been or were caused by a medical device and malfunctions in the device that would likely cause or contribute to a death or serious injury if it were to recur.
Failure to comply with applicable regulatory requirements can result in enforcement action by the FDA, which may include sanctions, including but not limited to, warning letters; fines, injunctions, and civil penalties; recall or seizure of the device; operating restrictions, partial suspension or total shutdown of production; refusal to grant 510(k) clearance or PMA approvals of new devices; withdrawal of 510(k) clearance or PMA approvals; and civil or criminal prosecution. To ensure compliance with regulatory requirements, medical device manufacturers are subject to market surveillance and periodic, pre-scheduled and unannounced inspections by the FDA.
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Laboratory Developed Tests (LDTs)
Federal agencies involved in the regulation of LDTs include CMS and the FDA. CMS regulates the quality of clinical laboratories and the clinical testing process pursuant to the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments of 1988 (CLIA) and the FDA regulates the safety and effectiveness of the diagnostic test pursuant to authorities in the Federal, Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FDCA). Although the FDA has statutory authority to regulate medical devices, the FDA has historically exercised its enforcement discretion and not enforced applicable provisions of the
FDCA and FDA regulations with respect to LDTs, which are a subset of in vitro diagnostic tests that are intended for clinical use and designed, manufactured and used entirely within a single laboratory. The FDA does not consider devices to be LDTs if they are designed or manufactured completely, or partly, outside of the laboratory that offers and uses them. We sell our Saphyr system on an RUO basis to CLIA certified cytogenetic laboratories, which may use the system to develop LDTs.
At various times since 2006, the FDA has issued documents outlining its intent to require varying levels of FDA oversight of many types of LDTs. Congress has also considered legislation that would change how LDTs are regulated. It is unclear at this time if or when the FDA will finalize its plans to end enforcement discretion for LDTs, and even then, whether the new regulatory requirements are expected to be phased-in over time. However, the FDA may decide to regulate certain LDTs on a case-by-case basis at any time. A significant change in the way that the FDA regulates any LDTs that we, our collaborators, or our customers develop using our technology could affect our business. If the FDA requires laboratories to undergo premarket review and comply with other applicable FDA requirements in the future, the cost and time required to commercialize an LDT will increase substantially and may reduce the financial incentive for laboratories to develop LDTs, which could reduce demand for our instruments and our other products. In addition, if the FDA were to change the way that it regulates LDTs to require that we undergo pre-market review or comply with other applicable FDA requirements before we can sell our instruments or our other products to clinical cytogenetics laboratories, our ability to sell our instruments and other products to this addressable market would be delayed, thereby impeding our ability to penetrate this market and generate revenue from sales of our instruments and our other products.
Europe/Rest of World Government Regulation
Whether or not we obtain FDA approval for a product, we must obtain the requisite approvals from regulatory authorities in non-U.S. countries prior to the commencement of clinical trials or marketing of our product for clinical diagnostic use in those countries. The regulations in other jurisdictions vary from those in the U.S. and may be easier or more difficult to satisfy and are subject to change. For example, the European Union recently published new regulations that will result in greater regulation of medical devices and IVDs. The IVD Regulation is significantly different from the IVD Directive that it replaces in that it will ensure that the new requirements apply uniformly and on the same schedule across the member states, including a risk-based classification system and increasing the requirements for conformity assessment. The conformity assessment process results in the receipt of a CE designation which has been sufficient to begin marketing many types of IVDs. That process will become more difficult and costly to complete.
Other Governmental Regulation
We are subject to laws and regulations related to the protection of the environment, the health and safety of employees and the handling, transportation and disposal of medical specimens, infectious and hazardous waste and radioactive materials. For example, the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration has established extensive requirements relating specifically to workplace safety for healthcare employers in the U.S. This includes requirements to develop and implement multi-faceted programs to protect workers from exposure to blood-borne pathogens, including preventing or minimizing any exposure through needle stick injuries. For purposes of transportation, some biological materials and laboratory supplies are classified as hazardous materials and are subject to regulation by one or more of the following agencies: the U.S. Department of Transportation, the U.S. Public Health Service, the U.S. Postal Service and the International Air Transport Association. We generally use third-party vendors to dispose of regulated medical waste, hazardous waste and radioactive materials that we may use during our research.
Laboratories that purchase certain of our OGM products and perform clinical diagnostic testing are also subject to extensive regulation under the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments of 1988, or CLIA, requiring clinical laboratories to meet specified standards in areas such as personnel qualifications, administration, participation in proficiency testing, patient test management, quality control, quality assurance and inspections. Adverse interpretations of current CLIA regulations or future changes in CLIA regulations could have an adverse effect on sales of any affected products. Moreover, if we decide to operate our own clinical testing laboratory with respect to our OGM products, such clinical testing would require compliance with CLIA. If, in the future, we operate our own clinical laboratory to perform clinical diagnostic testing with respect to our OGM products, such activities would become subject to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, or HIPAA, and its corresponding regulations, as well as additional federal and state laws that impose a variety of fraud and abuse prohibitions on healthcare providers, including clinical laboratories.
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Coverage and Reimbursement
Currently, our OGM product, Saphyr, is for research use only, but clinical laboratories may acquire our instrumentation through a capital purchase or capital lease and use the Saphyr and direct label stain chemistry to create their own potentially reimbursable products, such as laboratory developed tests for in vitro diagnostics. Our customers may generate revenue for these testing services by seeking the necessary approval of their product from the FDA or CMS, along with coverage and reimbursement from third-party payors, including government health programs and private health plans. The ability of our customers to commercialize diagnostic tests based on our technology will depend in part on the extent to which coverage and reimbursement for these tests will be available from such third-party payors.
In the U.S., molecular testing laboratories have multiple options for reimbursement coding, but we expect that the primary codes used will be the genomic sequencing procedure codes, or GSPs. The American Medical Association, or AMA, added GSPs to its clinical laboratory fee schedule in 2015. In addition, CMS recently issued a coverage determination providing for the reimbursement of next-generation sequencing for certain cancer diagnostics using an FDA-approved in vitro diagnostic test. Private health plans often follow CMS coverage and reimbursement guidelines to a substantial degree, and it is difficult to predict what CMS will decide with respect to the coverage and reimbursement of any products or services our customers try to commercialize.
In Europe, coverage for molecular diagnostic testing is varied. Countries with statutory health insurance (e.g., Germany, France, The Netherlands) tend to be more progressive in technology adoption with favorable reimbursement for molecular diagnostic testing. In countries such as the United Kingdom with tax-based insurance, adoption and reimbursement for molecular diagnostic testing is not uniform and is influenced by local budgets.
Ultimately, coverage and reimbursement of new products and services is uncertain, and whether laboratories that use our instruments to develop their own products or services will attain coverage and adequate reimbursement is unknown. In the U.S., there is no uniform policy for determining coverage and reimbursement. Coverage can differ from payor to payor, and the process for determining whether a payor will provide coverage may be separate from the process for setting the reimbursement rate. In addition, the U.S. government, state legislatures and foreign governments have shown significant interest in implementing cost containment programs to limit the growth of government-paid healthcare costs, including price controls and restrictions on reimbursement.
Diagnostic Services
Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments of 1988 and State Regulation
As a clinical laboratory, we are required to hold certain federal and state licenses, certifications and permits to conduct our business. As to federal certifications, in 1988, Congress passed the CLIA, establishing more rigorous quality standards for all commercial laboratories that perform testing on human specimens for the purpose of providing information for the diagnosis, prevention, or treatment of disease or the assessment of the health or impairment of human beings. CLIA requires such laboratories to be certified by the federal government and mandates compliance with various operational, personnel, facilities administration, quality and proficiency testing requirements intended to ensure the accuracy, reliability and timeliness of patient test results. CLIA certification is also a prerequisite to be eligible to bill state and federal healthcare programs, as well as many commercial third-party payers, for laboratory testing services. Our laboratory located in Salt Lake City, Utah is CLIA certified. This laboratory must comply with all applicable CLIA requirements. If a clinical laboratory is found to be out of compliance with CLIA standards, CMS may impose sanctions, limit or revoke the laboratory’s CLIA certificate (and prohibit the owner, operator or laboratory director from owning, operating, or directing a laboratory for two years following license revocation), a directed plan of correction, on-site monitoring, civil monetary penalties, civil actions for injunctive relief, criminal penalties, or suspension or exclusion from the Medicare and Medicaid programs.
CLIA provides that a state may adopt laboratory licensure requirements and regulations that are more stringent than those under federal law and requires compliance with such laws and regulations. The State of Utah follows all CLIA regulations for laboratory facility and personnel requirements. Utah does not have any additional licensure and regulations.
Our laboratory in Salt Lake City, Utah has also been accredited by the College of American Pathologists, or CAP, which means that our laboratory has been certified as following CAP standards and guidelines in operating the laboratory facility and in performing tests that ensure the quality of our test results. Further, certain states require clinical laboratories to obtain licenses to test specimens from patients, or to receive orders from physicians, within those states. We hold such out-of-state laboratory licenses in California, Pennsylvania, and Maryland
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HIPAA and other Privacy Laws
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (“HIPAA”), established comprehensive federal standards for the privacy and security of health information. The HIPAA standards apply to three types of organizations: health plans, healthcare clearing houses, and healthcare providers that conduct certain healthcare transactions electronically (“Covered Entities”). Title II of HIPAA, the Administrative Simplification Act, contains provisions that address the privacy of health data, the security of health data, the standardization of identifying numbers used in the healthcare system and the standardization of certain healthcare transactions. The privacy regulations protect medical records and other protected health information by, among other things, limiting their use and release, giving patients the right to access their medical records and limiting most disclosures of health information to the minimum amount necessary to accomplish an intended purpose. The HIPAA security standards require the adoption of administrative, physical, and technical safeguards and the adoption of written security policies and procedures.
On February 17, 2009, Congress enacted Subtitle D of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act, or HITECH, provisions of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. HITECH expanded and strengthened HIPAA, created new targets for enforcement, imposed new penalties for noncompliance and established new breach notification requirements for Covered Entities. Regulations implementing major provisions of HITECH were finalized on January 25, 2013 through publication of the HIPAA Omnibus Rule (the “Omnibus Rule”).
Under HITECH's breach notification requirements, Covered Entities must report breaches of protected health information that has not been encrypted or otherwise secured in accordance with guidance from the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (the “Secretary”). Required breach notices must be made as soon as is reasonably practicable, but no later than 60 days following discovery of the breach. Reports must be made to affected individuals and to the Secretary and, in some cases depending on the size of the breach, they must be reported through local and national media. Breach reports can lead to investigation, enforcement and civil litigation, including class action lawsuits.
As a result of our clinical diagnostic services, we are currently subject to HIPAA and maintain an active compliance program that is designed to identify security incidents and other issues in a timely fashion and enable us to remediate, mitigate harm or report if required by law. We are subject to prosecution and/or administrative enforcement and increased civil and criminal penalties for non-compliance, including a new, four-tiered system of monetary penalties adopted under HITECH. We are also subject to enforcement by state attorneys general who were given authority to enforce HIPAA under HITECH. To mitigate penalties under the HITECH breach notification provisions, we must ensure that breaches of protected health information are promptly detected and reported within the company, so that we can make all required notifications on a timely basis. However, even if we make required reports on a timely basis, we may still be subject to penalties for the underlying breach.
In addition to the federal privacy and security regulations, there are a number of state laws regarding the privacy and security of health information and personal data that are applicable to our clinical laboratories. Many states have also implemented genetic testing and privacy laws imposing specific patient consent requirements and protecting test results by strictly limiting the disclosure of those results. State requirements are particularly stringent regarding predictive genetic tests, due to the risk of genetic discrimination against healthy patients identified through testing as being at a high risk for disease. We believe that we have taken the steps required of us to comply with health information privacy and security statutes and regulations, including genetic testing and genetic information privacy laws in all jurisdictions, both state and federal. However, these laws constantly change, and we may not be able to maintain compliance in all jurisdictions where we do business. Failure to maintain compliance, or changes in state or federal laws regarding privacy or security could result in civil and/or criminal penalties, significant reputational damage and could have a material adverse effect on our business.
The General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”), which applies to all EU member states from May 25, 2018, also applies to some of our operations. The GDPR is discussed in more detail elsewhere in this report. The GDPR applies not only to organizations within the EU, but also applies to organizations outside of the EU that offer goods or services to EU data subjects or that process or hold personal data of EU data subjects. The regulation specifies higher potential liabilities for certain data protection violations, and we anticipate that it will result in a greater compliance burden for us as we conduct our business in the European Union. Fines for non-compliance can range from the greater of 2% of annual global revenues or €10 million, up to the greater of 4% of annual global revenues or €20 million. The GDPR is discussed in more detail under the heading “International Regulations” below.
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Transparency Laws and Regulations
A federal law known as the Physician Payments Sunshine Act (the “Sunshine Act”) requires certain medical device manufacturers to track and report to the federal government certain payments and other transfers of value made to physicians (defined to include doctors, dentists, optometrists, podiatrists and chiropractors), other healthcare professionals (such as physician assistants and nurse practitioners), and teaching hospitals and ownership or investment interests held by physicians and their immediate family members. Manufacturers must report data for the previous calendar year by the 90th day of the then-current calendar year. CMS then publishes the data on a publicly available website no later than June 30th. There are also state “sunshine” laws that require manufacturers to provide reports to state governments on pricing and marketing information. Several states have enacted legislation requiring medical device manufacturers to, among other things, establish marketing compliance programs, file periodic reports with the state, make periodic public disclosures on sales and marketing activities, and such laws may also prohibit or limit certain other sales and marketing practices. These laws may adversely affect our sales, marketing, and other activities by imposing administrative and compliance burdens on us. If we fail to track and report as required by these laws or to otherwise comply with these laws, we could be subject to the penalty provisions of the pertinent state and federal authorities.
Reimbursement and Billing
Reimbursement and billing for diagnostic services is highly complex. Laboratories must bill various payors, such as private third-party payors, including managed care organizations (“MCO”), and state and federal health care programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid, and each may have different billing requirements. Additionally, the audit requirements we must meet to ensure compliance with applicable laws and regulations, as well as our internal compliance policies and procedures, add further complexity to the billing process. Other factors that complicate billing include:
•variability in coverage and information requirements among various payors;
•patient financial assistance programs;
•missing, incomplete or inaccurate billing information provided by ordering physicians;
•billings to payors with whom we do not have contracts;
•disputes with payors as to which party is responsible for payment; and
•disputes with payors as to the appropriate level of reimbursement.
Depending on the reimbursement arrangement and applicable law, the party that reimburses us for our services may be:
•a third-party who provides coverage to the patient, such as an insurance company or MCO;
•a state or federal healthcare program; or
•the patient.
•Presently, approximately 90% of our diagnostic service revenue is paid by private third-party payors.
Federal and State Fraud and Abuse Laws
A variety of state and federal laws prohibit fraud and abuse involving state and federal health care programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid. These laws are interpreted broadly and enforced aggressively by various state and federal agencies, including CMS, the Department of Justice, the Office of Inspector General for the Department of Health and Human Services (“OIG”), and various state agencies. In addition, the Medicare and Medicaid programs increasingly use a variety of contractors to review claims data and to identify improper payments as well as fraud and abuse. Any overpayments must be repaid within 60 days of identification unless a favorable decision is obtained on appeal. In some cases, these overpayments can be used as the basis for an extrapolation, by which the error rate is applied to a larger set of claims, and which can result in even higher repayments.
Anti-Kickback Laws
The Anti-Kickback Statute prohibits, among other things, knowingly and willfully offering, paying, soliciting, receiving or providing remuneration, directly or indirectly, in exchange for or to induce either the referral of an individual, or the furnishing, arranging for or recommending of an item or service that is reimbursable, in whole or in part, by a federal health care program. “Remuneration” is broadly defined to include anything of monetary value, such as, for example, cash payments, gifts or gift certificates, discounts, or the furnishing of services, supplies or equipment. The Anti-Kickback Statute can be interpreted broadly to prohibit many arrangements and practices that are lawful in businesses outside of the health care industry.
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Recognizing the potential breadth of interpretation of the Anti-Kickback Statute and the fact that it may technically prohibit many otherwise innocuous or beneficial arrangements within the health care industry, the OIG has issued a series of regulations, or safe harbors intended to protect such arrangements. Compliance with all requirements of a safe harbor immunizes the parties to the business arrangement from prosecution under the Anti-Kickback Statute. The failure of a business arrangement to fit within a safe harbor does not necessarily mean that the arrangement is illegal or that the OIG will pursue prosecution but would be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Still, in the absence of an applicable safe harbor, a violation of the Anti-Kickback Statute may occur even if only one purpose of an arrangement is to induce referrals. The penalties for violating the Anti-Kickback Statute can be severe. These sanctions include criminal, civil and administrative penalties, imprisonment and possible exclusion from the federal health care programs. Many states have adopted laws similar to the Anti-Kickback Statute, and some apply to items and services reimbursable by any payor, including private third-party payors.
Further, the Eliminating Kickbacks in Recovery Act of 2018, or EKRA, prohibits payments for referrals to recovery homes, clinical treatment facilities, and laboratories. EKRA’s reach extends beyond federal health care programs to include private insurance (i.e., it is an “all payor” statute). For purposes of EKRA, the term “laboratory” is defined broadly and without reference to any connection to substance use disorder treatment. The law includes a limited number of exceptions, some of which closely align with corresponding federal Anti-Kickback Statute exceptions and safe harbors, and others that materially differ.
Physician Self-Referral Bans
The federal ban on physician self-referrals, commonly known as the Stark Law, prohibits, subject to certain exceptions, physician referrals of Medicare patients to an entity providing certain designated health services, which include laboratory services, if the physician or an immediate family member of the physician has any financial relationship with the entity. Several Stark Law exceptions are relevant to arrangements involving clinical laboratories, including but not limited to: (1) fair market value compensation for the provision of items or services; (2) payments by physicians to a laboratory for clinical laboratory services; (3) certain space and equipment rental arrangements that satisfy certain requirements; and (4) personal services arrangements. Penalties for violating the Stark Law include the return of funds received for all prohibited referrals, fines, civil monetary penalties and possible exclusion from federal health care programs. In addition to the Stark Law, many states have their own self-referral bans, which may extend to all self-referrals, regardless of the payor.
State and Federal Prohibitions on False Claims
The federal False Claims Act imposes liability on any person or entity that, among other things, knowingly presents, or causes to be presented, a false or fraudulent claim for payment to the federal government. Under the False Claims Act, a person acts knowingly if he or she has actual knowledge of the information or acts in deliberate ignorance or in reckless disregard of the truth or falsity of the information. Specific intent to defraud is not required. The qui tam provisions of the False Claims Act allow a private individual to bring an action on behalf of the federal government and to share in any amounts paid by the defendant to the government in connection with the action. Penalties include payment of up to three times the actual damages sustained by the government, plus significant civil penalties, as well as possible exclusion from federal health care programs. In addition, various states have enacted similar laws modeled after the False Claims Act that apply to items and services reimbursed under Medicaid and other state health care programs, and, in several states, such laws apply to claims submitted to any payor.
Civil Monetary Penalties Law
The federal Civil Monetary Penalties Law, or the CMP Law, prohibits, among other things, (1) the offering or transfer of remuneration to a Medicare or state health care program beneficiary if the person knows or should know it is likely to influence the beneficiary’s selection of a particular provider, practitioner, or supplier of services reimbursable by Medicare or a state health care program, unless an exception applies; (2) employing or contracting with an individual or entity that the provider knows or should know is excluded from participation in a federal health care program; (3) billing for services requested by an unlicensed physician or an excluded provider; and (4) billing for medically unnecessary services. The penalties for violating the CMP Law include exclusion, substantial fines, and payment of up to three times the amount billed, depending on the nature of the offense.
Penalties
Failure to comply with the aforementioned fraud and abuse laws could result in significant penalties, including civil, criminal, and administrative penalties, damages, fines, disgorgement, the curtailment or restructuring of our operations, exclusion from participation in federal and state healthcare programs, additional integrity oversight and reporting obligations, imprisonment, contractual damages, and reputational harm. If any of the physicians or other healthcare providers or entities with whom we do business is found to be not in compliance with applicable laws, they may be subject to criminal, civil or administrative sanctions, including exclusions from government funded healthcare programs.
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International Regulations
We market some of our tests outside of the United States and are subject to foreign regulatory requirements governing laboratory licensure, human clinical testing, use of tissue, privacy and data security, and marketing approval for our tests. These requirements vary by jurisdiction, differ from those in the United States and may require us to implement additional compliance measures or perform additional pre-clinical or clinical testing. For example, the In Vitro Diagnostic Medical Devices (2017/746/EU) (“IVDR”) will replace the existing In Vitro Diagnostic Medical Devices Directive (98/79/EC) (“IVDD”) in the European Union (“EU”). The IVDR was published in May 2017, marking the start of a five-year period of transition from the IVDD. During the transitional period the IVDR will come into force gradually, starting with the provisions related to the designation of Notified Bodies and the ability of manufacturers to apply for new certificates under the IVDR. The transitional period will end on 26 May 2022, the “Date of Application” (“DoA”) of the Regulation. From that point the IVDR will apply fully. The EU has also implemented the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, which requires us to meet new and more stringent requirements regarding the handling of personal data about European Union residents. In many countries outside of the United States, coverage, pricing and reimbursement approvals are also required. We are also required to maintain accurate information on and control over sales and distributors’ activities that may fall within the purview of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, its books and records provisions and its anti-bribery provisions.
Other Regulatory Requirements
Our laboratory is subject to federal, state and local regulations relating to the handling and disposal of regulated medical waste, hazardous waste and biohazardous waste, including chemical, biological agents and compounds, blood and bone marrow samples and other human tissue. Typically, we use outside vendors who are contractually obligated to comply with applicable laws and regulations to dispose of such waste. These vendors are licensed or otherwise qualified to handle and dispose of such waste.
We are subject to laws and regulations related to the protection of the environment, the health and safety of employees and the handling, transportation and disposal of medical specimens, infectious and hazardous waste and radioactive materials. For example, the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (“OSHA”) has established extensive requirements relating specifically to workplace safety for healthcare employers in the U.S. This includes requirements to develop and implement multi-faceted programs to protect workers from exposure to blood-borne pathogens, including preventing or minimizing any exposure through needle stick injuries. For purposes of transportation, some biological materials and laboratory supplies are classified as hazardous materials and are subject to regulation by one or more of the following agencies: the U.S. Department of Transportation, the U.S. Public Health Service, the United States Postal Service, the Office of Foreign Assets Control, and the International Air Transport Association. We generally use third-party vendors to dispose of regulated medical waste, hazardous waste and radioactive materials and contractually require them to comply with applicable laws and regulations.
Healthcare Reform
In the U.S. and abroad, there have been and continue to be a number of legislative initiatives to contain healthcare costs and change the way healthcare is financed. By way of example, in March 2010, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, as amended by the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act, collectively, the ACA, became law. The ACA is a sweeping law intended to broaden access to health insurance, reduce or constrain the growth of healthcare spending, enhance remedies against fraud and abuse, add new transparency requirements for the healthcare and health insurance industries, impose new taxes and fees on the health industry and impose additional health policy reforms.
There have been executive, judicial and Congressional challenges to certain aspects of the ACA. For example, President Trump signed several Executive Orders and other directives designed to delay the implementation of certain provisions of the ACA or otherwise circumvent some of the requirements for health insurance mandated by the ACA. Concurrently, Congress considered legislation to repeal or repeal and replace all or part of the ACA. While Congress has not passed comprehensive repeal legislation, it has enacted laws that modify certain provisions of the ACA, such as removing penalties, effective January 1, 2019, for not complying with the ACA's individual mandate to carry health insurance. On June 17, 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed a challenge on procedural grounds that argued the ACA is unconstitutional in its entirety because the “individual mandate” was repealed by Congress. Thus, the ACA will remain in effect in its current form. Prior to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling, on January 28, 2021, President Biden issued an executive order to initiate a special enrollment period from February 15, 2021 through August 15, 2021 for purposes of obtaining health insurance coverage through the ACA marketplace. The executive order also instructed certain governmental agencies to review and reconsider their existing policies and rules that limit access to healthcare, including among others, reexamining Medicaid demonstration projects and waiver programs that include work requirements, and policies that create unnecessary barriers to obtaining access to health insurance coverage through Medicaid or the ACA. It is possible that the ACA will be subject to judicial or Congressional challenges in the future. It is unclear how such challenges and the healthcare reform measures of the Biden administration will impact the ACA and our business.
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Further, other legislative changes have been proposed and adopted since the ACA was enacted. For example, on April 1, 2014, the Protecting Access to Medicare Act of 2014, or PAMA, was signed into law, which, among other things, significantly altered the payment methodology under the Medicare Clinical Laboratory Fee Schedule, or CLFS. PAMA requires certain laboratories performing clinical diagnostic laboratory tests to report to CMS the amounts paid by private payors for laboratory tests. Beginning on January 1, 2018, CMS has begun using reported private payor pricing to periodically revise payment rates under the CLFS. Based on current law, between January 1, 2023 and March 31, 2023, applicable laboratories will be required to report on data collected during January 1, 2019 and June 30, 2019. This data will be utilized to determine 2024 to 2026 CLFS rates.
We expect that additional state and federal healthcare reform measures will be adopted in the future, any of which could limit the amounts that federal and state governments will pay for healthcare products and services. For example, Congress is considering additional health reform measures. In addition, sales of our tests outside of the U.S. will subject us to foreign regulatory requirements, which may also change over time. Further, it is possible that additional governmental action is taken in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Other Healthcare Laws
Our operations are directly or indirectly, through our customers, subject to various federal and state fraud and abuse laws, including, without limitation, the federal and state anti-kickback statutes and false claims laws. These laws may impact, among other things, our sales and marketing and education programs, and our financial and business relationships with researchers who use our instruments to develop marketed products or services. By way of example: the federal Anti-Kickback Statute prohibits, among other things, any person or entity from, among other things, knowingly and willfully soliciting, receiving, offering or paying any remuneration, directly or indirectly, to induce, or in return for, purchasing, leasing, ordering, or arranging for or recommending the purchase, lease, or order of any good, facility, item, or service reimbursable, in whole or in part, under a federal healthcare program; and the federal false claims laws, including, without limitation the federal civil False Claims Act, prohibit, among other things, anyone from knowingly and willingly presenting, or causing to be presented for payment, to the federal government (including Medicare and Medicaid) claims for reimbursement for, among other things, drugs or services that are false or fraudulent, claims for items or services not provided as claimed, or claims for medically unnecessary items or services. The ACA, among other things, amended the intent requirement of the federal Anti-Kickback Statute to clarify that a person or entity does not need to have actual knowledge of the statute or specific intent to violate it in order to have committed a crime. In addition, the ACA clarifies that the government may assert that a claim that includes items or service resulting from a violation of the federal Anti-Kickback Statute constitutes a false or fraudulent claim for purposes of the federal civil False Claims Act.
Further, the Eliminating Kickbacks in Recovery Act of 2018, or EKRA, prohibits payments for referrals to recovery homes, clinical treatment facilities, and laboratories. EKRA’s reach extends beyond federal health care programs to include private insurance (i.e., it is an “all payor” statute). For purposes of EKRA, the term “laboratory” is defined broadly and without reference to any connection to substance use disorder treatment. The law includes a limited number of exceptions, some of which closely align with corresponding federal Anti-Kickback Statute exceptions and safe harbors, and others that materially differ. Additionally, the Stark Law, which prohibits a physician from making a referral for certain designated health services covered by the Medicare or Medicaid program, including laboratory and pathology services, if the physician or an immediate family member of the physician has a financial relationship with the entity providing the designated health services and prohibits that entity from billing, presenting or causing to be presented a claim for the designated health services furnished pursuant to the prohibited referral, unless an exception applies.
There are also state and foreign law equivalents of each of the above federal laws, such as anti-kickback and false claims laws, that may impose similar or more prohibitive restrictions, and may apply to items or services reimbursed by any non-governmental third-party payors, including private insurers. In addition, we may be subject to HIPAA, as amended by the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act and their implementing regulations, which imposes certain requirements relating to the privacy, security and transmission of individually identifiable health information without appropriate authorization by entities subject to the rule, such as health plans, healthcare clearinghouses and certain healthcare providers and their business associates who create, use or disclose individually identifiable health information on their behalf. We may also be subject to state and foreign laws that govern the privacy and security of health information in some circumstances, many of which differ from each other in significant ways and often are not preempted by HIPAA, thus complicating compliance efforts.
If our operations are found to be in violation of any of these laws, we may be subject to significant penalties, including, without limitation, civil, criminal, and administrative penalties, damages, fines, disgorgement, the curtailment or restructuring of our operations, exclusion from participation in federal and state healthcare programs, additional integrity oversight and reporting obligations, imprisonment, contractual damages, and reputational harm.
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Human Capital Management
As of December 31, 2021, we had 299 employees, of which 152 work in sales, sales support and marketing, 80 work in research and development, 34 work in operations and 33 work in general and administrative. As of December 31, 2021, of our 299 employees, 251 were located in the U.S. and 48 were employed outside the U.S. None of our employees are represented by a labor union or are subject to a collective bargaining agreement.
Our human capital resources objectives include, as applicable, identifying, recruiting, retaining, incentivizing and integrating our existing and new employees, advisors and consultants. The principal purposes of our equity incentive plans are to attract, retain and reward personnel through the granting of stock-based compensation awards, in order to increase stockholder value and the success of our company by motivating such individuals to perform to the best of their abilities and achieve our objectives.
Corporate Information
We were formed in January 2003 as BioNanomatrix LLC, a Delaware limited liability company. In August 2007, we became BioNanomatrix Inc., a Delaware corporation. In October 2011, we changed our name to BioNano Genomics, Inc., and in July 2018, we changed our name to Bionano Genomics, Inc.
Our principal executive offices are located at 9540 Towne Centre Drive, Suite 100, San Diego, California 92121, and our telephone number is (858) 888-7600. Our website address is www.bionanogenomics.com. Information contained in, or that can be accessed through, our website is not incorporated by reference into this Annual Report, and you should not consider information on our website to be part of this Annual Report. Our design logo, “Bionano,” and our other registered and common law trade names, trademarks and service marks are the property of Bionano Genomics, Inc.
Available Information
Access to our Annual Report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, current reports on Form 8-K, and amendments to these reports filed with or furnished to the SEC, may be obtained through the investor section of our website at http://www.bionanogenomics.com. We do not charge for access to and viewing of these reports. Information in the investor section and on our website is not part of this Annual Report on Form 10-K or any of our other securities filings. Our filings with the SEC may be accessed through the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov. All statements made in any of our securities filings, including all forward-looking statements or information, are made as of the date of the document in which the statement is included unless otherwise specified, and we do not assume or undertake any obligation to update any of those statements or documents unless we are required to do so by law.
ITEM 1A. RISK FACTORS
RISK FACTORS
You should consider and read carefully all of the risks and uncertainties described below, as well as other information included in this Annual Report, including our financial statements and related notes appearing below. The risks described below are not the only ones facing us. The occurrence of any of the following risks or additional risks and uncertainties not presently known to us or that we currently believe to be immaterial could materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition or results of operations. In such case, the trading price of our securities could decline. This Annual Report also contains forward-looking statements and estimates that involve risks and uncertainties. Our actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking statements as a result of specific factors, including the risks and uncertainties described below.
Risks related to our financial condition and need for additional capital
We are an early commercial-stage company and have a limited commercial-history, which may make it difficult to evaluate our current business and predict our future performance.
We are an early commercial-stage company and have a limited commercial history. Our limited commercial history may make it difficult to evaluate our current business and, especially when combined with the other risk factors listed in this section, makes predictions about our future success or viability subject to significant uncertainty. In particular, we have significantly increased our headcount through recent acquisitions of other businesses and the expansion of our sales, marketing and research and development teams, which has increased our operating costs in a manner not historically reflected in our consolidated financial statements, and plan to further increase headcount as we expand our operations. Our business model has evolved over time, and combined with our recent acquisitions, this has impacted the composition and concentration of our revenues, which we expect to continue to change with any future acquisitions and further expansion of our operations. These changes, among others, may make it difficult to evaluate our current business, assess our future performance relative to prior performance and accurately predict our future performance. We have encountered in the past, and will continue to encounter in the future, risks and difficulties frequently experienced by early commercial-stage companies, including those associated with scaling up our infrastructure, increasing the size of our organization and integrating acquired businesses. If we do not address these risks
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successfully, or if our assumptions regarding these risks and uncertainties are incorrect or change over time, our results of operations could differ materially from our expectations and our business, financial condition and results of operations could be materially and adversely affected.
We have incurred recurring net losses since we were formed and expect to incur losses in the future. We cannot be certain that we will achieve or sustain profitability.
Since our inception, we have incurred recurring net losses. We incurred net losses of $72.4 million and $41.1 million, and used cash in operations of $71.9 million and $38.3 million for the years ended December 31, 2021 and 2020, respectively. As of December 31, 2021, we had an accumulated deficit of $216.1 million. We cannot predict if we will be profitable in the near future or at all. We expect that our losses will continue for the foreseeable future as we plan to invest significant additional funds toward the expansion of our commercial organization, research and development efforts and capital expenditures, among other things. Our recent acquisitions have increased our expenses and we expect that any future acquisitions of businesses, assets, products or technologies will further increase our expenses, which may result in additional losses. We also expect significant increases in our stock-based compensation expense in future periods, reflecting higher stock option valuations as a public company and the issuance of additional equity awards due to increased headcount. In addition, we incur significant legal, accounting and other expenses as a result of being a public company, especially as we no longer qualify as an emerging growth company or a smaller reporting company and are therefore required to comply with additional disclosure and compliance requirements, subject to a transition period. These factors, among others, will make it hard for us to achieve and sustain profitability. We may also incur significant losses in the future for a number of other reasons, many of which are beyond our control, including the level of market acceptance of our products, the introduction of competitive products and technologies, our future product development efforts, our market penetration and our margins, as well as the other risks described below.
Our quarterly and annual operating results and cash flows have fluctuated in the past and might continue to fluctuate, which makes our future operating results difficult to predict and could cause the market price of our securities to decline substantially.
Numerous factors, many of which are outside our control, may cause or contribute to significant fluctuations in our quarterly and annual operating results. These fluctuations may make financial planning and forecasting uncertain and may result in unanticipated decreases in our available cash, which could negatively affect our business and prospects. In addition, one or more of such factors may cause our revenue or operating expenses in one period to be disproportionately higher or lower relative to the other periods. As a result, comparing our operating results on a period-to-period basis might not be meaningful. You should not rely on our past results as indicative of our future performance. Moreover, our stock price might be based on expectations of future performance that are unrealistic or that we might not meet and, if our revenue or operating results fall below the expectations of investors or securities analysts, the price of our securities could decline substantially.
Our operating results have varied in the past. In addition to other risk factors listed in this section, some of the important factors that, alone or together, may cause fluctuations in our quarterly and annual operating results include:
•adoption of our optical genome mapping solutions on our Saphyr system or successor systems;
•the successful integration of our Lineagen and BioDiscovery businesses;
•execution on our commercial and reimbursement strategy involving Lineagen;
•customer demand for current BioDiscovery software solutions, including NxClinical, and future software solutions developed through BioDiscovery’s platform;
•the timing of customer orders and payments and our ability to recognize revenue;
•the rate of utilization of consumables by our customers;
•reductions in or other difficulties relating to staffing, capacity, shutdowns or slowdowns of laboratories and other institutions in our customer base, as well as other impacts stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic or other similar factors, such as reduced or delayed investment in new technologies or spending on products, technologies or consumables;
•differences in purchasing patterns across our customer base, including potential differences in consumables spending between earlier adopters of our technologies and more recent customers and variances in rates of increase of consumables spending following new technology purchases, some of which may be compounded by impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic;
•our ability to successfully integrate new personnel, technology and other assets that we may acquire into our company;
•the timing of the introduction of new systems, products, technologies, system and product enhancements and services;
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•changes in governmental funding of life sciences research and development or other changes that impact budgets, budget cycles or seasonal or other spending patterns of our customers;
•future accounting pronouncements or changes in our accounting policies; and
•the outcome of any current or future litigation or governmental investigations involving us or other third parties with whom we do business.
In addition, a significant portion of our operating expenses are relatively fixed in nature, and planned expenditures are based in part on expectations regarding future revenue. Accordingly, unexpected revenue shortfalls could decrease our gross margins and cause significant changes in our operating results from quarter to quarter. If this occurs, the trading price of our securities could fall substantially. This variability and unpredictability caused by factors such as those described above and elsewhere in this section could also result in our failing to meet the expectations of industry or financial analysts or investors for any period. If our revenue or operating results fall below the expectations of analysts or investors or below any guidance we may provide, or if the guidance we provide is below the expectations of analysts or investors, the price of our securities could decline substantially. Such a stock price decline could occur even when we have met or exceeded any previously publicly stated guidance.
If we are unable to maintain adequate revenue growth or do not successfully manage such growth, our business and growth prospects will be harmed.
We may not achieve substantial growth rates in future periods. Investors should not rely on our operating results for any prior periods as an indication of our future operating performance. To effectively manage our anticipated future growth, we must continue to maintain and enhance our financial, accounting, manufacturing, customer support and sales administration systems, processes and controls. Failure to effectively manage our anticipated growth could lead us to over-invest or under-invest in development, operational and administrative infrastructure; result in weaknesses in our infrastructure, systems, or controls; give rise to operational mistakes, losses, loss of customers, productivity or business opportunities; and result in loss of employees and reduced productivity of remaining employees.
Our continued growth could require significant capital expenditures and might divert financial resources from other projects such as the development of new products, technologies and services. As additional products and technologies are commercialized, we may need to incorporate new equipment, implement new technology systems, or hire new personnel with different qualifications. Failure to manage this growth or transition could result in turnaround time delays, higher product costs, declining product quality, deteriorating customer service, and slower responses to competitive challenges. A failure in any one of these areas could make it difficult for us to meet market expectations for our products and technologies, and could damage our reputation and the prospects for our business.
If our management is unable to effectively manage our anticipated growth, our expenses may increase more than expected, our revenue could decline or grow more slowly than expected and we may be unable to implement our business strategy. The quality of our products, technologies and services may suffer, which could negatively affect our reputation and harm our ability to retain and attract customers.
Our future capital needs are uncertain and we will require additional funding in the future to advance the commercialization of Saphyr, NxClinical and our other products, technologies and services, as well as continue our research and development efforts. If we fail to obtain additional funding, we will be forced to delay, reduce or eliminate our commercialization and development efforts.
Our operations have consumed substantial amounts of cash since our inception. We expect to continue to spend substantial amounts of cash in order to continue the commercialization of our products and technologies, fund our research and development programs, expand headcount and execute potential strategic transactions. Although we raised $384.7 million of gross proceeds during 2021, we may need to raise additional funding, or we may seek additional capital due to favorable market conditions or strategic considerations, even if we believe we have sufficient funds for our current or future operating plans. Such funding may mean the sale of common or preferred equity or convertible debt securities, entry into one or more credit facilities or another form of third-party funding, or seeking other debt financing. We may also consider raising additional capital in the future to expand our business, to pursue strategic investments, to take advantage of financing opportunities, or for other reasons, including to:
•expand our sales and marketing efforts to further commercialize our products, technologies and services and address competitive developments;
•expand our research and development efforts to improve our existing products, technologies and services and develop and launch new products, technologies and services, particularly if any of our products, technologies and services are deemed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, or FDA, to be medical devices or otherwise subject to additional regulation by the FDA;
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•seek FDA approval to market our existing RUO products or new products utilized for diagnostic purposes;
•lease additional facilities or build out existing facilities as we continue to grow our employee headcount, inventory and research and development;
•further expand our operations outside the United States;
•enter into collaboration arrangements, if any, or in-license products and technologies;
•acquire or invest in complimentary businesses or assets;
•add operational, financial and management information systems; and
•cover increased costs incurred as a result of continued operation as a public company, including costs resulting from our no longer qualifying as an emerging growth company and a smaller reporting company and becoming a large accelerated filer.
Our future funding requirements will be influenced by many factors, including:
•market acceptance of our products, technologies and services, and the variability in costs to achieve such acceptance;
•the cost and timing of establishing additional sales, marketing and distribution capabilities;
•the cost of our research and development activities;
•our ability to satisfy any outstanding or future debt obligations;
•the success of our existing distribution and marketing arrangements and our ability to enter into additional arrangements in the future;
•the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic; and
•the effect of competing technological and market developments.
The various ways we could raise additional capital carry potential risks. We cannot assure you that we will be able to obtain additional funds on acceptable terms, or at all. If we raise additional funds by issuing equity or equity-linked securities, our stockholders may experience dilution. Any equity or debt securities we issue could provide for rights, preferences, or privileges senior to those of holders of our common stock. Future debt financing, if available, may involve covenants restricting our operations or our ability to incur additional debt. Any debt or equity financing may contain terms that are not favorable to us or our stockholders. If we raise additional funds through collaboration and licensing arrangements with third parties, it may be necessary to relinquish some rights to our technologies or our products, or grant licenses on terms that are not favorable to us.
If we do not have, or are not able to obtain, sufficient funds, we may have to delay development or commercialization of our technologies and products. We also may have to reduce marketing, customer support or other resources devoted to our products or technologies or cease operations. Any of these factors could have a material adverse effect on our financial condition, operating results and business. Any of the foregoing could significantly harm our business, prospects, financial condition and results of operation and could cause the price of our securities to decline.
Our business, and that of our customers, has been adversely affected by the effects of public health crises, including the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, the COVID-19 pandemic has materially affected our operations globally, including at our headquarters in San Diego, California, as well as the business or operations of our research partners, customers and other third parties with whom we conduct business.
Our business could be adversely affected by health crises in regions where we have operations, concentrations of sales and marketing teams, distributors or other business operations. Such health crises could also affect the business or operations of our research partners, customers and other third parties with whom we conduct business. In particular, the evolving effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and government measures taken in response have had significant impacts, both direct and indirect, on businesses and commerce, as significant reductions in business-related activities have occurred, supply chains have been disrupted, and manufacturing and clinical development activities have been curtailed or suspended. Continued remote work policies, quarantines, shelter-in-place and similar government orders, shutdowns or other restrictions on the conduct of business operations related to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have materially affected and may continue to materially affect how we, our customers, and our suppliers are operating our businesses.
In response to public health directives and orders implemented in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we have implemented work-from-home policies for certain employees. We have also modified certain business practices, including those related to employee travel and cancellation of physical participation in meetings, events and conferences, and implemented new protocols to promote social distancing and enhance sanitary measures in our offices and facilities. The quarantine of our personnel and the inability to access our facilities or customer sites has adversely affected, and is expected to continue adversely affecting, our operations, namely in sales and marketing and product delivery. For example, we experienced at various times during the
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pandemic the inability to visit certain customer sites to support installation or service our OGM systems. In addition, certain members of our workforce are now performing their duties remotely and these employees have not been able to maintain the same level of productivity and efficiency due a lack of resources that would otherwise be available to them in our offices and additional demands on their time, such as increased responsibilities resulting from school closures or the illness of family members. Furthermore, our remote workforce poses increased risks to our information technology systems and data as more of our personnel leverage resources not necessarily within our control.
The effects of these public health directives and orders and our related adjustments in our business have negatively impacted productivity, disrupted our business and delayed our timelines, the magnitude of which will depend, in part, on the length and severity of the restrictions and other limitations on our ability to conduct our business in the ordinary course. The spread of COVID-19 has resulted in a widespread health crisis that is also adversely affecting economies and financial markets globally, which may negatively affect demand for our products, technologies and services and materially affect us financially. For example, customers who have committed to order minimum quantities of consumables or to purchase our Saphyr instrument have delayed these commitments. Further, restrictions on our ability to travel, stay-at-home orders and other similar restrictions on our business have limited our ability to support our global and domestic operations, including providing installation and training and customer service, resulting in disruptions in our sales and marketing efforts and negative impacts on our commercial strategy. In addition, while many of our employees have been vaccinated, we do not know if vaccination will remain effective against further COVID-19 variants such as the Delta and Omicron variants. To the extent our employees are exposed to or become ill with COVID-19, our ability to conduct our operations may be impaired from time to time.
In addition, disruption of global financial markets as a result of COVID-19 may limit our ability to access capital, which could negatively affect our liquidity. A recession or market correction resulting from the spread of COVID-19 could also materially affect our business and the value of our securities even after the outbreak of COVID-19 has subsided due to, among other things, unforeseen adverse impacts on us or our third-party manufacturers, vendors and customers.
Also, in connection with our Lineagen diagnostic services, COVID-19 poses the risk that we or our employees, contractors, suppliers, courier delivery services and other partners may be prevented from conducting business activities for an indefinite period of time, including due to spread of the disease within these groups or due to shutdowns that may be requested or mandated by governmental authorities. The continued spread of COVID-19 and the measures taken by the governments of countries affected could disrupt the supply chain of materials needed for our diagnostic tests, interrupt our ability to receive specimens, impair our ability to perform or deliver the results from our tests, impede patient movement or interrupt healthcare services causing a decrease in test volumes, delay coverage decisions from Medicare and third-party payors, delay ongoing and planned clinical trials involving our tests and have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations. For example, COVID-19 related disruptions to the global supply chain created challenges in our getting sufficient components and raw materials for production of our OGM systems and consumables. If the pandemic persists, these disruptions could reoccur or persist.
These and similar, and perhaps more severe, disruptions in our operations could negatively impact our business, operating results and financial condition. In addition, quarantines, stay-at-home, executive and similar government orders, or the perception that such orders, shutdowns or other restrictions on the conduct of business operations could occur, have disrupted our supply chain and affected customer decision-making. For example, any actual or perceived disruption in our product distribution channel could alter customer buying decisions, prompting customers to delay or cancel their orders, which would negatively impact our sales revenue and could harm our reputation. In addition, we anticipate that ongoing disruptions in our supply chain will cause shortages in the materials required to operate our instruments, therefore limiting our ability to process customer samples and the ability of users of our system to operate our system.
The ultimate impact of the COVID-19 outbreak or a similar health epidemic is highly uncertain and subject to change. We do not yet know the full extent of delays or impacts on our business or the global economy as a whole, and such impacts may not be fully recoverable. In addition, the current and potential adverse impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on our business, financial condition, results of operations and growth prospects, may also have the effect of heightening many of the other risks and uncertainties described in this Annual Report.
Changes in tax laws or regulations that are applied adversely to us or our customers may have a material adverse effect on our business, cash flow, financial condition or results of operations.