San Diego, CA 8/24/17— DNA sequencing and array-based technology firm Illumina has partnered with Telegraph Hill, a venture capital and growth equity company, to form Verogen. The independent company will have certain exclusive rights to Illumina’s NGS technology for forensics customers, and will be the sole provider of the system as well as the ForenSeq DNA Signature Prep Kit and the ForenSeq Universal Analysis Software. Illumina will continue to manufacture the MiSeq FGx system and consumables. “The MiSeq FGx Forensic Genomics System continues to lead the transition to NGS, and we believe the best way to realize the full potential of this business is to create a company with a management team dedicated to using genomics to make a safer and more just world,” stated Dawn Barry, vice president, New and Emerging Markets at Illumina. Related Illumina staff and infrastructure will transition to the new company. Kirk Malloy, former senior vice president of Applied Genomics at Illumina, will serve as the new company’s CEO.

With this decision, Illumina is pursuing the spin off strategy it employed with Helix for consumer NGS testing and GRAIL for cancer testing. Seemingly, the company is focusing on its core initiatives and product markets. Illumina launched the MiSeq FGx system in 2015.