Illumina

Illumina made big news earlier this year when it announced it had achieved what many had thought was inconceivable: the $1,000 genome.

Some are skeptical that Illumina’s next-generation sequencer, the HiSeq X Ten, will truly be able to sequence a whole human genome at that price, arguing that only a few high-volume sequencers would be able to achieve that low cost. Still, it is a remarkable feat; just 13 years ago it took $100 million to sequence the human genome, according to the National Human Genome Research Institute.

San Diego–based Illumina holds a commanding share of the sequencing market and is also making strides in using genomics to further the nascent field of personalized medicine. In August, the company announced it was entering into strategic partnerships with pharmaceutical companies AstraZeneca and Sanofi as well as Janssen Biotech to develop an oncology test system that would be used for “clinical trials of targeted cancer therapies with a goal of developing and commercializing a multi-gene panel for therapeutic selection.”

[image courtesy of ILLUMINA]