Hello and welcome to the Bionano Genomics Inc. Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded.
It's now my pleasure to turn the call over to your host, Monique Kosse with LifeSci Advisors. Please go ahead, Monique.
Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Bionano Genomics conference call. Leading the call today will be Doctor. Eric Holmlin, CEO of Bionano. This morning, Bionano issued a press release announcing its acquisition of Lineagen.
A copy of the release can be found on the Investor Relations page of the company's website. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that certain statements made during this conference call may be forward looking, including statements about Bionano's strategic and commercialization plans, 2020 sales pipeline, anticipated benefits or improvements to the Saphyr system and advantages of the Saphyr system over current technologies, expectations regarding timing, assumptions regarding the COVID-nineteen pandemic and content of study results. Such forward looking statements are based on current expectations, and there can be no assurances that results contemplated in these statements will be realized. Actual results may differ materially from statements due to a number of factors and risks, some of which are identified in Bionana's press release issued earlier today and the company's other reports filed with the SEC. These forward looking statements are based on information available to Bionano today, and the company assumes no obligation to update statements as circumstances change.
An audio recording and webcast replay for today's conference call will also be available online on the Investors section of the company's website. For the benefit of those who may be listening to the replay or archived webcast, this call is held and recorded on 08/24/2020. With that, I will turn the call over to Eric Holmlin. Eric?
Thank you, Monique, and good morning, everyone. It's really exciting for me to be here and talk to you this morning about an acquisition that we completed over the weekend, give you the announcement that Bionano has acquired Lineagen, which is a leader in clinical testing for patients showing signs of neurodevelopmental delay including autism spectrum disorder and other disorders of childhood development. What we believe through this acquisition is that Merck product line through Bionano which is based on the Saphyr system and its consumables, that we will now be able to expand that product portfolio to include a host of laboratory developed tests that are offered in a services environment through a CLIA certified operation at Lineagen and together this combination of capabilities is really going to accelerate the development of Bionano into the leader of digital cytogenetics, which is a path that we've been on and will stay on going forward. As Monique mentioned, there will be some forward looking statements as part of our conversation today and I would refer you to all of our public filings for the relevant information in connection with these forward looking statements. And I'd like to begin with just a recap of Bionano and our base business.
And as you know, for all of you who have been following the company, Bionano sells the Saphyr system and it's really the core of our revenue engine. And Saphyr has been developed to detect what we call the other genomic variant, structural variations. And it's the only platform capable of truly comprehensive structural variation detection, ability to see all types of structural variations. And it has the ability to do this in samples that are remarkably complex. In cancer samples, for example, where pathogenic variants are present at very low abundance, Saphyr is the only system capable of this type of structural variation detection.
And we have been putting it to work to drive something we call the digital cytogenetics revolution. And so if we think about cytogenetics as really a traditional form of diagnostic testing for constitutional genetic disorders and cancer, cytogenetics comprises a handful, three primary testing workflows, karyotyping, fluorescence in situ hybridization or FISH, and microarray analysis. And what's so powerful about Sapphire is that it is capable of consolidating these three fairly complicated labor intense cumbersome workflows into a single assay that runs on Saphyr and we call that digital cytogenetics. Now I wanna tell you a little bit about Lineagen because Lineagen is a highly complementary business that has been focused on providing actionable information through diagnostics services to patients with developmental disorders. And they've developed a menu of laboratory developed tests.
They're offering five different tests today, all of which run off of a single cheek swab or buccal swab. And that testing really begins with the first step assay, which is designed to use chromosomal microarrays to look at large structural variations. The ones that you can see with microarrays, which are deletions and duplications or so called unbalanced variants. In connection with First Step there are a handful of other assays that are also run including Fragile X, some pharmacogenomic testing. And for patients who are negative by first step, the clinical indications and guidelines in testing for patients with developmental delay provide for running a reflex test by whole exome sequencing and that's the next step plus assay.
And so when a patient's microarray is negative, it's followed up by whole exome sequencing. And there is a whole genome diagnostic assay available as well and what characterizes all of these assays is that they run from a straightforward cheek swab and are laboratory developed tests, highly personalized, combined with genetic counseling to provide the physicians who are referring patients and their families with end to end support including reimbursement of the assay. So this is a very powerful platform for testing in constitutional genetic diseases. But I want everybody to see Lineagen not only for the incredible products that they have and the solutions that they're providing to patients and their families, but as much more than those products. And so on this slide we've really outlined some of the key strategic rationale that's underlying the deal.
And importantly, I want to begin by saying that Lineagen is a commercial stage company. And so at the very beginning of this combination of companies, there is going to be an immediate impact of revenues. And so we will be able to add the Lineagen revenues to our revenues and really increase the overall critical mass of revenues in the company and accelerate that path. And so revenue impact is an important driver for us. The idea of combining a product based business and a services based business is something that we think is really powerful because in this area of genetic testing, genomic analysis, it sometimes becomes critical to offer a centralized services service offering.
This is something that we've done very deliberately in Bionano this year and that is to expand our services offering. And now we're gonna be able to do that even more broadly but under the CLIA umbrella and so that's really important because that's a quality system that allows for the data to be used by a much broader audience than ever before. So those are two key product and revenue based drivers but when we think more strategically, I think one of the most powerful aspects of the Lineagegen acquisition is this idea that we are really bringing into Bionano all of the essential components for building a reimbursed diagnostic menu on Saphyr. So we gain a CLIA certification and this is powerful because this allows us to develop laboratory developed tests and commercialize them into the space. We are acquiring access, exclusive access to a proprietary database that was developed at Toronto Sick Kids Hospital.
And this is what makes the Lineage and Test the most powerful test available for pediatric neurodevelopmental delay and other disorders of childhood development because they have access to genes and information about those genes that nobody else has access to. And so what may turn up as a variant of unknown significance in an assay run by another lab at Lineagen, they're able to link that variant to disease in many cases because it's covered in this proprietary database. And that's a database that we will be able to leverage going forward to develop assays on Saphyr. There also is an archive of patient samples and large database fully annotated that's derived from the over 30,000 patients and 60,000 tests overall that have performed, have been performed to date in Lineage. And of course this number is growing on a daily basis.
And so we'll be able to leverage that database in development of tests going forward. And then Lineage brings with it a number of skills that Bionano is seeking to really leverage going forward. And in the first area it's around this clinical cytogenetics and custom interpretation software. And so in order to provide results for patients and their families and the physicians who have referred them, Lineagen employs leading cytogeneticists to make determinations of significance of variants that are found in their assays through an interpretation pathway. This capability is critical as we begin to transfer tests from the traditional platforms onto Saphyr.
They bring genetic counseling and so this is a key solution that provides support in interpretation of results but also in support of physicians who are seeking to determine whether they should be referring patients in the first place. And so this skill is not only critical for maintaining and growing Lineage's place as a provider of key solutions. But it's also critical in informing Saphyr product developers as we build that menu of tests. And then there are two aspects that are so key to providing us with the ingredients that we need to eliminate any reimbursement challenge around the commercialization of Saphyr based tests. So certified coders are people who are trained in applying the network of CPT codes and other methodologies to communicate with payers in an effort to get tests reimbursed.
And then we bring in a host of third party payer contracts. And so we will be able to leverage those as we integrate Saphyr testing into the workflow. And so I really want folks to recognize that Lineagen brings revenues in the short term, but it's much more than revenues. It's a whole set of skills that we don't have to create from scratch at Bionano. We acquire them and we have them up and running at really a market leading level.
And so now if we look at the two companies side by side, we see that we're bringing Bionano with its product based business that is derived from Saphyr sales where we're addressing a $3,000,000,000 market and an opportunity to sell 10,000 sapphires, growing adoption in the cytogenetics community in The US and Europe. We have about 101 employees at Bionano and our trailing twelve month revenues as of June 30 were about 8,500,000 We combine that with Lineagen which is a services based business running a portfolio of laboratory developed tests developed under the CLIA umbrella addressing roughly a $1,000,000,000 market of pediatric developmental disorders. They have about 35 employees and their trailing twelve month revenues as of the June were about $6,000,000 And so we really want you to think about this as a comparable scale to Bionano revenues with the potential of really accelerating the top line expansion for Bionano essentially immediately. Now I want to look at the two companies really as one. And so we start out with the Bionano base business that's derived from system sales, consumable sales and as we know we're progressing in that area with the growing installed base and incredible performance of consumable sales that we reported on recently, ongoing validation of Saphyr as the key platform for digital cytogenetic analysis.
And layer on top of that the existing lineage in business that's based on its first line chromosomal microarray analysis, future whole exome sequencing analysis. And so these are two components that come together to increase the revenues of Bionano right out of the gate. But then there are a number of pathways that we are able to pursue in following a path toward expanded clinical product development. And so we'll be able to leverage this CLIA license to expand and develop more tests. And it's our intention to work with labs not only within our own four walls at Bionano but partner labs around the world.
We will be able to leverage Lineagen's key experience in reimbursing assays to get SAFIRE assays reimbursed. When we've done that and we can point other cytogenetic labs to that successful pathway of reimbursement, we believe that that will lower a critical barrier in adoption of Saphyr throughout cytogenetics. Novel laboratory developed tests based on proprietary content is something that we can now begin to get into. And lastly, and this is really the first time that we're talking about it, we will have an option to develop an FDA cleared platform running based on Saphyr running FDA cleared assays. And so by bringing this acquisition in, we really amplify the opportunities that we have to become a full fledged clinical diagnostics system and services provider.
And so lastly, I just wanna underscore that this combination is driving financial benefits through a series of revenue synergies And there will be cost synergies. I want folks to know that this is a highly complementary team and so we're not talking about synergies upfront but what we're talking about is as we are able to leverage economies of scale for the combined companies, we believe that operating expenses will be more efficient over time. And I also want to point out that this idea of combining a genomics platform company like Bionano with a diagnostic services company like Lineagen has been done before. One of the first examples of that happening was when Illumina acquired Veronata Health in 2013. Folks will probably remember that at that time, Sequinome and other companies were leading the charge to implement Illumina technology for NIPT, or non invasive prenatal testing.
And Illumina acquired one of the leading service providers in that area and this was something that caused some questions to come up. Was Illumina going to be competing with Sequinome and other service providers competing with their customers? And the answer was no. They were bringing Veronada in so that they could really optimize the platform to serve that services, those service customers who would adopt that platform, optimize the sequencer for NIPT testing. I would also point out that subsequent to that acquisition they also sought and received FDA clearance for a sequencer that was running NIPT testing.
And so the acquisition of Illumina, of Veronata Health by Illumina is a real close parallel. And then recently in the past few months we saw the acquisition of Archer by Invitae and so in that case it was a services company acquiring the platform company that brought Invitae into oncology. But it also gave Invitae this combination of centralized services offering to support customers combined with a decentralized product offering. And so that's exactly what we're doing in this acquisition is that we are providing ourselves with the capability to serve whatever customer is out there seeking Bionano data, we're giving them a path to get it. That will ensure that the SAFIRE and Bionano data become the basis of digital cytogenetic testing in the future.
Here's a look at a 2019 pro form a financial snapshot. So for Bionano on a standalone, in 2019 revenues were about $10,100,000 Lineagen $7,500,000 and so on a pro form a combined basis $17,600,000 for the full year 2019. The cost of revenues are listed down below and from that you can walk to gross margin and you can see that the revenues from Lineagen enjoy significant margin as of 2019 and I can say that those margins have improved substantially in 2020 as a result of really excellent work by the Lineage and team to improve the cost of revenue and decrease that and so there's margin expansion even beyond what's presented on this slide. And so this is really an opportunity for us to expand our blended margin in the combined company. And lastly I just wanna summarize the terms.
And so this is a very affordable acquisition for Bionano, a stock deal where we paid no cash to acquire the company. We issued about 6,200,000.0 shares at a total value of $5,000,000 which equates to a price per share of 81¢ in this transaction and we absorbed about $4,600,000 in the company's trade payables and paid off their paycheck protection program loan. And so this is a very modest financial commitment for Bionano to bring in this incredible value to expand our revenue line on a comparable scale to what we have today and really bring in a skill set that vastly complements what we have today and really creates a scenario where we are going to accelerate the adoption of Saphyr throughout the cytogenetics community. And so in closing, I just want to welcome all of our Lineage Inn friends to Bionano. And I want to thank them and their board and their CEO, Michael Paul, who will be staying on at Bionano as the Chief Strategy Officer through the transition.
And I want to emphasize that this is an augmentation to the strategic path that Bionano has been on. We are focused on this digital cytogenetics revolution, but we believe that this move dramatically accelerates that. And that in taking this step, we not only become a fully clinical player in genome analysis now, but that we will create this leader in digital cytogenetics by offering the combination of systems and consumables together with laboratory developed tests in a way that's completely unparalleled for cytogenetic analysis. And so that is really the end of the prepared remarks that I have for you today and I would like to open the floor for Q and A.
Thank you. We'll now be conducting a question and answer session. Our first question today is coming from Kevin DeGetter from Oppenheimer. Your line is now live.
Hey, good morning, Eric. Congrats on a really nice transaction here. A couple of questions from us. First, can you comment with regard to the LDT test menu, are there opportunities to validate or consolidate that onto Saphyr? Just kind of talk to us about going forward as we think about new content really being driven in part by some of the proprietary database you're acquiring?
Should we think about that content as sort of solely being developed on Saphyr? Or will this remain a hybrid model that where appropriate other technologies will continue to be used in the service offering?
Thank you, Kevin. I appreciate the kind words and you're sort of thinking along the right direction as to where the questions lie and what our plan is is definitely to transition that menu over to Sapphire over time. But we want to do this in a very thoughtful way because currently the test and its reimbursement is based on a relatively narrow swath of variants that are detected. Only some unbalanced, large structural variations and as you know, Sapphire will detect the balanced ones as well such as inversions and translocations. And so what we wanna do is develop really a proprietary test that can run on Saphyr, launch that as a laboratory developed test but something that's really specialized relative to what the current offering is and maintain the current offering because the current offering is totally consistent with guidelines.
And when we have developed more advanced tests, we can then go and work with the payers who are contracted with the company to really develop an elegant, value based reimbursement strategy for that test. And it's really at that time that we would convert the business over once the test is reimbursed. And I wanna emphasize that it's not our intention to make that something that only Lineagen as a Bionano company offers. We want that to be available throughout the market. And so what we will be doing on a go forward basis is really leveraging the Lineage and capability as a platform to expand and proliferate Saphyr throughout the community.
That makes sense. And maybe just one or two other quick ones for me. With regard to the pretty significant database of, I guess, data over 30,000 patients. How do you think about the opportunities to leverage that database both, I think as you mentioned in terms of menu expansion, new test development for Bionano. But is that a database that is appropriate for potential partnering with pharma on the therapeutic side?
I think you sort of alluded to in a couple of the slides. So just kind of thought help us better think of how to really leverage that asset that's coming in as part of the transaction.
So absolutely, you're right on track. I mean, I think there's two pieces to that puzzle. One, it's the proprietary database that has been in licensed. And so this is something that contains all sorts of data that link various genes to disorders of childhood development. Many of which are already known and published but not consolidated into a single place.
But many of the genes and links that are contained in that database have never been published, are not available to the market as a whole. And so this becomes a very valuable data set. As you know, rare disease therapy and drug development for rare diseases is an area of great interest throughout biotech and pharma. And so this becomes a source of information that can be used to develop cutting edge assays both for research and target development and discovery as well as advancement in the clinic. And then down the road, assays that can be used to manage patients.
And so we do fully intend to leverage that with the community. The other component, the other piece of the puzzle is the existing consented patient registry that exists within the company. And this is something that we intend to fully support, invest in and expand on a go forward basis. And so it's our hope that we will be able to very soon be able to consent patient samples that are coming in the door so that we can start running them on Saphyr because as you know, current tools are okay at seeing structural variations but Saphyr is amazing at seeing structural variations. So we will be able to really dramatically expand the content in that registry on a go forward basis.
And taking the database and the registry together is something that we can leverage for pharma in all sorts of partnerships that are simply not anything that we can do with Bionano as a standalone. So this is a whole area of economic opportunity for the combined company that didn't exist before this weekend.
Great. Super helpful. And then one last one for me then I'll get back in the queue. How should we think about the impact on cash burn from this transaction or some metrics around operating expenses?
Well, what I can tell you is that the team at Lineage and a lot out of necessity has learned how to do really a lot with a little. And we think we do that at Bionano but they are really, they have been amazing at that. And so this is not an operation that burns a lot of cash. Want to put numbers out there that we can't substantiate on a go forward basis but overall we see this as burning less than about a million dollars a quarter. And so compared to Bionano that's relatively minimal and I would caveat that number with that being kind of what we've seen in their financials for the 2020.
And we certainly reserve the right to invest in areas that impact that but bring in top line results and accelerate combined company programs that we've been talking about. But this is not a very in my opinion it's not a very significant incremental cash burn for Bionano. The acquisition itself, we're bringing in $4,600,000 of trade payables that have to be retired over time. And so that's going to add some incremental burn until that is retired. But you should not think of this as a significant change to our overall cash runway.
Makes sense. Thanks, Eric.
Thank you. Our next question today is coming from Scott Henry from Roth Capital. Your line is now live.
Thank you and good morning. A couple of questions. First, can you talk about the volume of tests performed over the last twelve months? And can you talk about with regards to that, what you would expect is kind of the organic growth rate for testing expansion? And I don't know if COVID-nineteen has had much of an impact on their business.
I guess any color you can provide there would be helpful as well.
Yes. Well, I think let me sort of start with your last question because that's the one that colors how I'm going to respond to the others. And for sure, COVID-nineteen has had a dramatic effect on their business because there has been a shutdown in the physicians who would, pediatric specialists, neurodevelopmental specialists who would be seeing the patients and referring them for testing. Those offices were closed for a substantial portion of the second quarter. They have begun to reopen and so we're starting to see samples flowing in.
So like many companies, 2020 is a question mark for Lineagen and it's tough to kind of think about how they would grow coming out of this. But I think that this is gonna be a growing business and what we wanna do is think about it as something that where our main growth is driven by Sapphire sales, modest growth over the next three to five years. I do believe that 2020 will be a 3,000,000 to $5,000,000 top line year. There's a lot of it's difficult to predict where the full year will end up just because of the COVID-nineteen issues. And I think that that can probably undergo a significant step up in 2021.
And our thinking is to support the business so it grows at a 15 to 20% CAGR going forward. We could probably invest in it to accelerate that growth but we want the main focus to be on driving Saphyr sales and adoption while this becomes a component of our overall market revenue product and market development initiatives. Overall, in terms of testing volume, just want to say that they've tested about 60,000 tests overall in the nine year history of the lab.
Okay. Great. And when we evaluate this transaction, I guess what will be the signals that we know if it's successful? Kind of what would be the timeline you would expect for revenue growth on the Saphyr systems or even within Lineagen? Just how should we think about evaluating this and the signals of going in the right or wrong direction?
Sure. Well, mean, think we will be breaking out those revenues and reporting them. And so I think you should expect to see the revenues for 2021 as an example being relatively comparable to Bionano's in scale. And we wanna grow those with the kind of CAGR that I mentioned. And so you'll be able to monitor that and judge us on that performance right out of the gate.
I think that what you're gonna wanna see in sapphire sales and sapphire consumables, growth in sapphire installed base is how I want to talk about it because as you know, we're working on the reagent rental programs and other strategies besides sapphire sales alone. But I think what you should see, what you should measure us on there is really just the successful execution of growing that installed base at an increasingly accelerated rate. And so I don't know that we're gonna be able to point to a definitive standalone metric within the Bionano business that says this worked. But if Bionano works and Saphyr drives the digital cytogenetics revolution, I believe that it's going to be having a lot to do with this acquisition.
Okay. And what do you think the timeline would be to generating the first test specifically for the Saphyr system? How long would we expect that to take?
Yeah, we would expect to see those types of assays coming online being developed sometime next year. And we are beginning an integration phase where the two companies are doing what they do after an acquisition and coming together. I think the beauty in this particular integration is that this is really a lock and key fit, excellent strategic fit. And so it's really about how can we support each other and then how can we write these combined company plans. And so we need to write those plans and I I wanna be hesitant to give you a lot of concrete timelines until we've written those plans and I would expect in some of our our upcoming calls to be able to talk about that stuff more definitively.
But I think we should see an LDT test coming out of Lineagen next year based on Saphyr.
Okay. Great. I guess the final question and I don't know if you have this answer in front of you, but can you tell me how much capital has been spent at Lineagen to date? Just trying to get a sense of the resources that have been put there and what you're gathering here.
Yes. I mean it's tens of millions and so it's well over 80,000,000.
Okay, great. That's helpful. Eric, thank you very much for taking the questions and congratulations.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question today is coming from Jason McCarthy from Maxim Group. Your line is now live.
Congratulations on the acquisition. I have more of a broad based question. Can you talk a little bit about how the natural progression or evolution of cytogenetics occurs? Because we've seen this as other molecular techniques like Western blotting went to high throughput. Obviously, the microarray came about, karyotyping is now relatively digital.
But this is a natural progression for microarrays to eventually convert to a Saphyr. They have Lineagen, I think has four or five tests now. Do you see those tests converting over to Saphyr based approaches? And then, you know, how does all that going to work in transforming cytogenetics? And then, of course, to Scott's point, you know, is that next test coming?
How many tests do you envision developing for Saphyr, basically converting microarrays all over to Saphyr?
Sure. So, that conversion process itself and we've seen this, we've seen this in clinical testing overall, not necessarily in cytogenetics but you cited Westerns in the conversions by ProteinSimple for example. And so those steps have been very successful and that's been a process of taking a difficult cumbersome workflow based on a lot of manual intervention and manual interpretation and converting it over to something that's digitized. We saw that in situ hybridization where Ventana automated that whole in situ hybridization testing paradigm. And so those are the things that we're seeking to do with Saphyr, convert it's not just chromosomal microarrays but karyotyping FISH and CMA together.
CMA is incredibly powerful but it's limited to looking at the unbalanced structural variations and so that's why karyotyping and FISH are still very broadly used. But Saphyr converts those three assays into a single assay and makes it much more efficient. So that's a value proposition. And the process itself really involves a product development initiative around a set of indications. Listen, we've actually outlined several between at least seven indications that we have outlined that are around this area of developmental delay and other forms constitutional genetic disorders.
It's by no means every single one, but there are several indications that we've outlined where Saphyr is really the single best platform to be testing for those on some repeat expansion disorders and other assays like that. And so the conversion process involves working with a team like the team at Lineagen to develop those assays. And while we have a great product development team at Bionano, we don't have the insights that Lineagen has, the cytogeneticists, the genetic counselors, the links to the physicians and patients and families who are undergoing this test, understanding of how to build the proper interpretation software. So all of these capabilities come together to put the markers into an assay on Saphyr. And that's the product development test.
We can do that under the CLIA certification there and launch it as a laboratory developed test. And that just begins the process with leveraging the commercial infrastructure that's in place at Lineage and we can get that out and have physicians start sending samples in and so we can go down a path of setting up the demand for those tests and that begins the process of addressing reimbursement. And so for the first time in Bionano, we will be able to through Lineagen bill payers for tests that are running on Saphyr. And as I've said to people many, many times, reimbursement for these assays is an art, it's not a science. And there are many pathways that are available but they need to be implemented, tested and worked out.
And the only way to do that is to adopt the platform and do it. And what we see is that while the community as a whole could do it, they're taking some risk, right, because they have an existing reimbursed production line. So we're gonna take that risk for them. We're gonna develop the tests on Saphyr, create the demand, go to the payers who are already under contract with us through Lineagen and negotiate reimbursement. And once we've done that, we're gonna make that playbook available to any cytogenetics lab that wants to adopt the system.
And that's what's unique. So some services labs would develop those tests and keep them for themselves, but we don't want to do that. We want to develop the test, we want to create the demand, but then we want to share that demand. And so this acquisition really addresses key skill sets upfront, the engine for product development, and we're gonna be focusing this team on their area of expertise which is neurodevelopmental disorders. It solves the reimbursement challenge and once we have those things in play, it creates another opportunity that's really unique that we always had as part of Bionano but is much more tangible now.
And it's that we can begin to put on paper, and my product development team that's listening to this call is saying I hope he's careful when he talks about this, but we can begin to put on paper and lay out the path to an FDA cleared Saphyr system running FDA cleared assays. And that's something that just expands our market overall in The U. S. There's still going be a lot of LDTs run on Saphyr even when it's FDA cleared but FDA clearance opens the doors to international adoption in a way that's much, much easier than the RUO designation that SAFIRE currently has. So this is a step that really expands the addressable market for us starting with product development, solving the reimbursement challenge and then getting onto an FDA cleared system down the road.
As part of the thank you and as part of the strategy, they have 35 people at company, how many of the 2,000 or so cytogenetics labs are they in? And as part of the strategy now to use that kind of reagent rental model to install Saphyr that cytogenetics labs where they already have contacts to get them to start using it and kind of see its value and go from there?
Well, you know, actually, I mean, you know, Lineage in itself you've got to think of is one of the 2,500 cytogenetics labs worldwide. And their team is calling on physicians who are referring patients for testing. And now with regard to where they're selling their tests, it's throughout the pediatric neurodevelopmental specialties and neurogenetic specialties, pediatric specialties overall. And what we're gonna be able to do is give cytogenetics labs that don't have access to this testing access in the future based on adopting SAFIRE.
Got it. Okay, great. Thank you. Congratulations again.
Thanks, Jason.
Thank you. We reached the end of our question and answer session. I'd like to turn the floor back over to management for any further or closing comments.
Well, just want to thank everybody who's joined this call and we are very excited about taking this big, big step for Bionano becoming a full fledged clinical services provider along with selling Saphyr throughout genomic analysis. And we believe this is really important for our development and we are just thrilled to put these two companies together and deliver the results that we've been talking about. And we'll be excited to update you when we get together on our next quarterly update. Thank you very much.
Thank you. That does conclude today's teleconference. You may disconnect your line at this time and have a wonderful day. We thank you for your participation today.