Following days of speculation, Illumina Inc. said today it will acquire liquid biopsy startup Grail Inc. for $8 billion in cash and stock, bringing back into the fold a company it spun out in 2016. The deal gives Illumina a major stake in the race the race to develop a less-invasive way to diagnose cancer. Since spinning out, Grail has raised nearly $2 billion from big-name investors with promises of a blood test for early cancer detection and is hoping to introduce its liquid biopsy as a laboratory-developed test (LTD) as early as next year.
Next-generation sequencing may help provide clinicians with a speedier answer as to the identity of the second pathogen, a service that may prove critical to suppressing the fatality rate in this and in future pandemics, according to Robert Schlaberg, chief medical officer of IDbyDNA Inc., of Salt Lake City.
PERTH, Australia – Australian public health laboratories are collaborating to sequence the virus genomes of all positive COVID-19 tests in Australia to track the virus using genomics across the country. The Communicable Disease Genomics Network (CDGN) and Illumina Inc. will track COVID-19 by using next-generation genomic sequencing technology.
LONDON – Illumina Inc. has named the first three U.K. genomics startups to be backed by its accelerator program, after expanding the scheme from the San Francisco Bay Area to its European headquarters in Cambridge, U.K.
San Diego-based Illumina Inc. is synonymous with next-generation sequencing (NGS) equipment. But when it comes to dealmaking, the genomics giant is focused largely on software to make its results more useful, accessible and affordable. It has acquired cloud-based software startup Bluebee Holding BV in its latest move on this front.
The U.S. FDA granted San Diego-based Illumina Inc. an emergency use authorization (EUA) for the first COVID-19 diagnostic test that uses next-generation sequencing (NGS). In addition to diagnosing infection with SARS-CoV-2, the COVIDSeq test can help researchers track mutations in the coronavirus.
LONDON – Base Genomics Ltd. has raised $11 million in an oversubscribed seed round to commercialize a new liquid biopsy technology for detecting DNA methylation, invented in the U.K. at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research at Oxford University.
Two players in the gene sequencing space, Illumina Inc. and Pacific Biosciences, have scotched their planned $1.2 billion merger roughly two weeks after the U.S. Federal Trade Commission posted a 5-0 vote to seek an injunction against the merger.
