10x Genomics Stock: The Illumina of Single-Cell Analysis?

The United States is famously the most litigious society in the world. One statistic we’ve come across is that the country spends about $310 billion a year on litigation. One particularly well-known American has been involved in some 3,500 lawsuits, perhaps skewing the statistics a bit. However, our particular interest is in patent lawsuits, which is when companies scuffle over intellectual property. About 14% of all patent litigation cases in the United States involve the biotech and pharmaceutical industry, and we’ve covered our share of them over the years. These include the big battle royale over gene-editing CRISPR technology and lesser-known lawsuits over something like genetic-testing techniques using fragments of DNA in blood.

A Litigious Beginning for 10x Genomics

That brings us to the rapidly emerging field of single-cell genomics, which is exactly what it says on the tin: the study of individual cell genomes. The technique can reveal cellular differences and functions in tissues and organs that are otherwise undetectable using traditional sequencing approaches by looking at the DNA or RNA of each cell. This can help scientists better understand diseases like cancer. Just li