Illumina Makes Read Length–Related Purchase and Discloses 2012 Sales
According to Mr. Flatley, Moleculo’s technology requires about 75% less incremental sequencing than alternative methods that have been published. Long-range phasing enables reads with the ability to distinguish whether a mutation is on the maternal or paternal chromosome. Long reads also enable applications in areas such as scaffolding for de novo genomes, structural variation in cancer, metagenomics and, eventually, clinical use without Sanger validation.
New York, NY 1/8/12—At the JPMorgan Global Healthcare Conference, Illumina announced the acquisition of Moleculo, a provider of technology enabling next-generation sequencing reads in excess of 10,000 bases. Illumina stated that it plans to commercialize the technology in the second quarter for phased genomes (indicating which parent an allele comes from) and for cancer research, and to make the technology available in kits in the fourth quarter. Established in 2012, Moleculo is a spin-out from Stephen Quake, PhD’s lab at Stanford and has six employees. Describing the technology, Illumina President and CEO Jay Flatley stated that it combines labeled short reads into synthetic long reads with high accuracy and consists of a sample-to-answer solution with a total turnaround time of less than four days. The transaction is expected to be accretive in 2013. At the conference, Illumina also disclosed that unaudited revenues for the fourth quarter 2012 grew 24% to $309 million, bringing 2012 sales to $1.15 billion for 9% growth. In 2013, the company is estimating revenues to grow in the 15% range.
