Illumina

Illumina, Inc.

Type	Public
Traded as	NASDAQ: ILMN NASDAQ-100 Component S&P 500 Component
Industry	Biotechnology
Founded	1998
Founder	David Walt Larry Bock John Stuelpnagel Anthony Czarnik Mark Chee
Headquarters	San Diego, California , United States
Key people	Francis deSouza (President & CEO)
Products	NovaSeq, MiniSeq, iSeq 100
Revenue	US$2752 million (2017)[1]
Operating income	US$875 million (2017)[1]
Net income	US$726 million (2017)[1]
Number of employees	~5,500
Website	www.illumina.com

[ ⚑ ] 32°53′15″N 117°10′23″W / 32.8875924°N 117.1730577°W / 32.8875924; -117.1730577

Illumina, Inc. is an American company incorporated in April 1998 that develops, manufactures and markets integrated systems for the analysis of genetic variation and biological function. The company provides a line of products and services that serve the sequencing, genotyping and gene expression and proteomics markets. Its headquarters are located in San Diego, California .

Illumina's technology had purportedly by 2013 reduced the cost of sequencing a human genome to US$4,000, down from a price of US$1 million in 2007.^[2] Customers include genomic research centers, pharmaceutical companies, academic institutions, clinical research organizations and biotechnology companies.

History

Czarnik, Stuelpnagel and Chee at their Illumina office in the Summer of 1998.

Illumina was founded in April 1998 by David Walt, Larry Bock, John Stuelpnagel, Anthony Czarnik, and Mark Chee. While working with CW Group, a venture capital firm, Bock and Stuelpnagel uncovered what would become Illumina's BeadArray technology at Tufts University and negotiated an exclusive license to that technology. In 1999 Illumina acquired Spyder Instruments (founded by Michal Lebl, Richard Houghten, and Jutta Eichler) for their technology of high throughput synthesis. Illumina completed its initial public offering in July 2000.

Illumina began offering single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) genotyping services in 2001 and launched its first system, the Illumina BeadLab, in 2002, using GoldenGate Genotyping technology. Illumina currently offers microarray-based products and services for an expanding range of genetic analysis sequencing, including SNP genotyping, gene expression, and protein analysis. Illumina's technologies are used by a broad range of academic, government, pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and other leading institutions around the globe.

On January 26, 2007, the Company completed the acquisition of Solexa, Inc. Solexa was founded in June 1998 by Shankar Balasubramanian, and David Klenerman to develop and commercialize genome sequencing technology invented by the founders at the University of Cambridge. Solexa INC was formed in 2005 when Solexa Ltd reversed into Lynx Therapeutics of Hayward.^[3] Illumina also uses the DNA colony sequencing technology, invented in 1997 by Pascal Mayer and Laurent Farinelli ^[4] and which was acquired by Solexa in 2004 from the company Manteia Predictive Medicine. It is being used to perform a range of analyses, including whole genome resequencing, gene expression analysis and small ribonucleic acid (RNA) analysis.

In June 2009, Illumina announced the launch of their own Personal Full Genome Sequencing Service at a depth of 30X for $48,000 per genome,^[5] and a year later dropped the price to $19,500.^[6][7] (As of May 2011), Illumina reduced the price to $4,000.^[8][9]

Up until 2010 Illumina sold only instruments that were labeled "for research use only"; in early 2010 Illumina obtained FDA approval for its BeadXpress system to be used in clinical tests.^[10][11] This was part of the company's strategy at the time to open its own CLIA lab and begin offering clinical genetic testing itself.^[12]

Illumina acquired Epicentre Biotechnologies, based in Madison, Wisconsin, on January 11, 2011.^[13] On January 25, 2012, Hoffmann-La Roche made an unsolicited bid to buy Illumina for $44.50 per share or about $5.7 billion.^[14][15] Roche tried other tactics, including raising its offer (to $51.00, for about $6.8 billion).^[16] Illumina rejected the offer,^[2][17] and Roche abandoned the offer in April.^[18]

In 2014, the company announced a multimillion-dollar product, HiSeq X Ten, that it forecast would provide large-scale whole-genome sequencing for $1,000/genome. The company claimed that forty such machines would be able to sequence more genomes in one year than had been produced by all other sequencers to date.^[19] In January 2014, Illumina already held 70 percent of the market for genome-sequencing machines.^[20] Illumina machines accounted for more than 90 percent of all DNA data produced.^[21]

On July 5, 2016 Jay Flatley, who had been CEO since 1999, assumed the role of executive chairman of the board of directors. Francis deSouza took on the role of president and chief executive officer, and continues to serve on the Illumina board of directors.^[22][23]

In late 2015, Illumina spun off the company Grail, focused on blood testing for cancer tumors in the bloodstream. The company has plans in 2017 to raise $1 billion in its second round of financing, and has received funding from Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos investing $100 million in Series A funding, and with Illumina maintaining a 20% holding share in Grail.^[24] The company is working with a blood test trial with over 120,000 women during scheduled mammogram visits in the states of Minnesota and Wisconsin, as well as a partnership with the Mayo Clinic. The company Grail uses Illumina sequencing technology for tests.^[25] The company plans to roll out the tests by 2019, with a cost of $500 per individual.^[26]

Litigation

In 2010, Cornell University and Life Technologies filed a lawsuit against Illumina because its microarray products infringed eight patents held by the university and exclusively licensed to the start-up. In 2017, Cornell attempted to exit a settlement with Illumina based on fraudulence for "misrepresentations to Cornell and concealed a broader settlement agreement with Illumina to fraudulently induce Cornell to execute the settlement agreement."^[27]

In February 2016, Illumina filed a lawsuit against Oxford Nanopore Technologies, which was the first company to commercialize nanopore sequencing. Illumina claimed that Oxford Nanopore infringed on its patents.^[28][29]

Products

DNA Sequencing

Illumina MiSeq sequencer

Illumina sells a number of high-throughput DNA sequencing systems, also known as DNA sequencers, based on technology developed by Solexa. The technology features bridge amplification to generate clusters and reversible terminators for sequence determination.^[30][31] The technology behind these sequencing systems involves ligation of fragmented DNA to a chip, followed by primer addition and sequential fluorescent dNTP incorporation and detection.

References

External links

• Illumina's Company Website
• DNAVision - Illumina official service provider.
• Gene Logic - performs research based on Illumina's Golden gate assay
• Illumina's Personal Full Sequencing Genome Service
• National Center for Genome Resources (NCGR) Sequencing Center - an Illumina Certified Service Provider.
• Genotypic Technology GENOMICS SIMPLIFIED - an Illumina Certified Service Provider.
• Map of Illumina NGS Instruments in the United States.
• Business data for Illumina:
  • Google Finance
  • Yahoo! Finance
  • Reuters
  • SEC filings

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