PacBio at JPM 2026: Clinical Momentum and SPRQ-Nx Economics

Clinical Market Transforms Business Mix 

The clinical segment became PacBio's growth engine in 2025, expanding 20% despite flat performance in non-human applications. This shift represents a fundamental change from the academic-heavy customer base that dominated prior years. 

"We had major headwinds in the academic markets, but we were able to grow in spite of that through growing very quickly in the clinical market," Henry said. Clinical-focused customers saw shipment growth of over 40% during the year. 

The transformation Henry previewed at last year's JPM conference—with early adopters like Quest Diagnostics, Myriad Genetics, and Radboud University Medical Center beginning to deploy HiFi sequencing—has accelerated into clinical implementation. 

Berry Genomics achieved a landmark milestone in December when China's NMPA approved the Sequel IIe platform for thalassemia testing, marking the first regulatory approval of any long-read sequencing platform globally. The test addresses a market of hundreds of thousands of samples annually, and Berry is expanding its menu to include Fragile X, spinal muscular atrophy, and Duchenne muscular dystrophy. 

At Stanford Medicine, clinicians are deploying Revio for pharmacogenomics to personalize prescriptions based on genetic profiles. Children's Mercy Hospital implemented HiFi as a first-line diagnostic for genetic disease, significantly improving diagnostic success while reducing turnaround times. Radboud UMC in the Netherlands has rapidly expanded usage, consolidating multiple standard-of-care tests onto a single Revio assay. 

Henry emphasized the rare disease opportunity, noting that more than 300 million patients globally suffer from rare diseases that could benefit from HiFi sequencing. The European rare disease market alone represents nearly $240 million in annual revenue. 

Platform Performance: Revio  

Revio, PacBio's flagship platform, faced placement headwinds in early 2025 due to funding uncertainty but finished strong with 21 placements in Q4. The clinical market drove the majority of demand, and 20% of 2025 orders were multi-system purchases—a key leading indicator for consumable growth. 

Last year at JPM, Henry reported that PacBio had placed 97 Revio units in 2024, making it the fastest-adopted platform in company history. The 2025 momentum, particularly in clinical accounts scaling from single to multiple systems, suggests consumable revenue will continue growing. 

But PacBio isn’t abandoning its customer base outside of healthcare. Concurrent with Henry’s talk at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, another team of PacBio researchers presented at PAG33, the Plant and Animal Genome Conference. They shared CiFi, a community-developed chromosome-scale sequencing method that integrates chromatin conformation capture (3C) with PacBio HiFi long-read sequencing to generate multi-contact reads and longer fragments. When paired with Revio SPRQ chemistry, PacBio hopes CiFi can lower barriers for projects constrained by cost or sample availability. It was published in Nature Communications last December (DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-66918-y).

Vega Gains Traction 

Vega, the desktop platform launched in late 2024, exceeded expectations with 140 placements in its first full year—far surpassing the seven units Henry mentioned shipping before year-end 2024. Critically, 65% of Vega placements went to customers new to PacBio, expanding the company's reach into microbial genetics, targeted panels, HLA analysis, and small genome applications. The product line generated approximately $24 million in shipments. 

Fourth quarter was Vega's strongest yet with 42 placements, up from 32 in Q3. The sales funnel continues improving, with deals now closing within the same quarter they originate—a sign of market maturity and reduced sales friction. 

SPRQ-Nx: The Economics Game-Changer 

The breakthrough Henry was most excited about was SPRQ-Nx chemistry, announced at the American Society of Human Genetics conference in October and entering beta testing in November. The technology leverages reusable SMRT cells—PacBio's most expensive component—to deliver 25% higher throughput per run while dramatically reducing cost per sample. 

"This is one of the rare times where not only we can lower the cost to our customers, but we can also expand our gross margins at the same time," Henry said, calling it a unique moment in the company's history. 

With SPRQ-Nx, PacBio can now price whole genomes with full HiFi resolution at $300 per genome, reaching competitive parity with short-read sequencing. This represents a significant drop from the $500-or-less pricing Henry cited for Revio at last year's J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference as fundamental to clinical and population-scale opportunities. 

Beta customer data shows the first and second runs on reused SMRT cells deliver equivalent output, validating the technology's value proposition. The beta has been so successful that PacBio is expanding it internationally into an early access program starting in February, with broader rollout throughout 2026. 

Customer response has been immediate. Henry noted that the SPRQ-Nx announcement has already influenced Revio purchasing decisions, with customers planning larger projects and new accounts engaging with the platform for the first time. 

Data Quality and AI Enable New Applications 

PacBio's emphasis on data comprehensiveness took center stage this year. The All of Us study published results in October showing that long-read sequencing detected over 50% of disease-driven associations missed by short-read technologies. 

PacBio customers generated 60% more data in 2025 than in 2024, significantly outpacing competitors whose data generation grew only around 10% according to Henry. This data explosion enables artificial intelligence applications across three tiers: improving base calling quality, facilitating large training datasets through federated infrastructure, and ultimately powering multi-omic foundation models for diagnostics and drug discovery. 

The HiFi Solves Consortium, a rare disease collaborative with more than 15 members, exemplifies the federated data approach. Participants can query datasets they don't directly possess, enabling discovery of rare variants that might otherwise require impractically large individual cohorts. 

Population Sequencing: Large Projects Take Shape 

Regional performance showed distinct patterns. Europe was PacBio's fastest-growing territory for the year, driven by clinical adoption in the Netherlands, Nordic countries, and Germany. The Americas region struggled through most of 2025 due to academic funding freezes but showed signs of recovery in Q4. Asia Pacific performed on target, bolstered by the Berry Genomics regulatory approval and growing service provider activity in China. 

Population sequencing programs progressed substantially in 2025. The All of Us study published its first long-read sequencing data in October. The Long Life Family Study began sequencing nearly 8,000 samples. The Korean Pangenome Reference Project is sequencing more than 10,000 samples to create the most comprehensive pan-genome reference ever assembled, incorporating structural variation and methylation data. 

Beyond these announced programs, Henry disclosed that PacBio is engaged in projects with the potential for hundreds of thousands of genomes. While he cautioned that these large government-run studies have complex implementations and long sales cycles, the scale represents a major opportunity as SPRQ-Nx economics make HiFi sequencing cost-competitive for population-scale work. 

Looking Forward: Standard of Care Ambitions 

Where last year's conference outlined goals to drive innovation and explore clinical LDT applications, this year Henry laid out a specific 2026 strategy focused on making HiFi the sequencing standard of care. The plan centers on successful global launch of SPRQ-Nx chemistry, accelerating clinical adoption through customers like Berry Genomics and the HiFi Solves Network, driving population sequencing studies, and continuing to push technological boundaries. 

Henry acknowledged that academic funding will likely remain challenged but expressed confidence that clinical momentum will more than compensate. The depth and quality of HiFi data, amplified by AI capabilities, positions PacBio to unlock biological insights that create value for patients, customers, and shareholders. 

"Our SPRQ-Nx chemistry fundamentally resets the economics of long-read sequencing," Henry said. "It makes it highly competitive and a compelling value proposition for customers around the world." 

PacBio will provide detailed 2026 guidance at its earnings call scheduled for February, where investors will learn whether the Q4 momentum and SPRQ-Nx economics translate into accelerated growth projections.