Illumina Enters Into Biobanking Deal With Four Major Health Care Providers

By Ron Shinkman, Editor, Laboratory Industry Report

San Diego-based Illumina has entered into biobanking deals with four major health care providers, allowing it to genotype tens of thousands of genetic specimens.

The deals have been reached with Vanderbilt University, the University of Colorado at Denver, Partners HealthCare and Montreal Heart Institute.

Terms of the agreements were not disclosed, but the genotyping work is extensive. There will be 100,000 samples from Vanderbilt; 32,000 from the University of Colorado; 25,000 from Partners HealthCare and more than 50,000 samples from the Montreal Heart Institute.

The genotyping will be performed on Illumina platforms. The data will be merged into the patients’ electronic medical records and will be used to guide treatment decisions moving forward, officials said.

“These four personalized medicine programs represent progressive examples of how characterizing the genome using multiple genetic analysis solutions is significantly advancing the understanding of human biology. These programs are at the forefront of translational research and the clinical application of genomic data,” said Illumina Chief Commercial Officer Christian Henry in a statement.

The announcement did not help to rally Illumina stock, which has been in a serious slump since the middle of last year. It dropped about 10 percent in the days after the announcement was made, to about $143 a share. As recently as last July, it was trading for as much as $240 per share.