Biotechnology company Illumina’s growth has been spectacular, in pretty much every way you look at it. In 1999 it had just 25 people on staff, today it employs more than 4000. The company’s stock price has increased 15-fold since its IPO in 2001, and sales regularly top US$1 billion per year.
Its primary business is building high output machines for sequencing human DNA, used by researchers, doctors and consumer companies, to do everything from understanding different types of cancer to decoding someone’s ancestry. But now it wants to democratise genetic information, by making its tools exponentially cheaper and easier to use.
It’s already responsible for driving down the cost of gene sequencing from US$100 million in 2001 to just US$1,000 today. The process used to take weeks, but now it can be finished in just days. However, now it wants to go one better.
Apple executive Phil Schiller – the man responsible for Apple’s App Store – joined Illumina’s board this summer, and Francis deSouza – with a background in computer science – took over as CEO. The plan is to open up genome sequencing to the wider public so that for a few hundred dollars anyone can map their DNA.
While services like 23andme.com already offer this service, Illumina wants to make DNA sequencing commonplace, which would lead to screening for cancer, and the ability to diagnose hereditary diseases.