Illumina backs three genomics startups

Gene-sequencing giant Illumina has founded a biotech incubator to develop applications for its technology.

As the cost of high-throughput genetic sequencing plummets, one of the industry's leading firms is supporting entrepreneurs who it hopes will showcase what the technology can do.

Genetic-analysis company Illumina today announced the first startup firms it has selected to help prove the worth of technologies that use next-generation sequencing. The Illumina Accelerator programme will support three companies — Encoded Genomics, EpiBiome and Xcell Biosciences — that hope to use sequencing in biopharmaceutical development and agriculture, and to develop biomedical research tools and diagnostics. The companies were chosen from 30 applicants, Illumina said.

Illumina, in San Diego, California, hopes that the funding will boost the number of firms marketing genomics applications outside the company's core areas of reproductive health and oncology, at a time when venture funding is relatively scarce for early-stage biotechnology companies.

“We are expanding the market for next-generation sequencing,” says Mostafa Ronaghi, Illumina’s senior vice-president and chief technology officer. Other biotechnology entrepreneurs say that the programme is a smart way for Illumina to boost the size of its own potential market: “They have this amazing technology, and they’re thinking, ‘How do we accelerate its adoption?’”