Zee Media Bureau\Philaso G Kaping
New Delhi: The X Prize Foundation has cancelled the $10-million Archon Genomics X Prize just two weeks before its official start.
X Prize Chief Executive Peter Diamandis said the competition was not “incentivizing the technological changes that our prize chair, Dr. Craig Venter, our sponsors Stewart and Marilyn Blusson, and the XPRIZE board had intended”.
The prize was established in 2006 to award the first team that could develop a technique to rapidly sequence 100 human genomes in 10 days at a cost of under $10,000 per genome. Later, it was changed to accurately sequencing 100 centenarians within 30 days for $1,000 or less per person
“Genome sequencing technology is plummeting in cost and increasing in speed independent of our competition,” He added. “Today, companies can do this for less than $5,000 per genome, in a few days or less — and are moving quickly towards the goals we set for the prize. For this reason, we have decided to cancel an X Prize for the first time ever."
The prize money will be returned to the sponsors.
