Illumina Halves Sequence Costs, Launches iPad App

By Bio-IT World Staff

June 10, 2011 | Confirming hunches in the industry, Jay Flatley annouced another price drop in Illumina's Individual Genome Sequencing (IGS) service. At the Consumer Genetics Show in Boston, the Illumina president and CEO knocked $10,000 from the price of individual genome sequencing, bringing the service to $9,500.  

The company is also offering a program to subsidize sequencing for patients with life-threatening disease where whole-genome sequence information may provide their physician with critical tools for diagnosis or treatment. The price under this program is $7,500 per genome and, for cancer patients, $10,000 for a tumor-normal pair.  

Illumina demonstrated the "MiGenome" application for iPad, predicting how patients will interact with their genetic data. The application allows users to visualize their genome and interrogate it for mendelian disorders, disease risk and pharmacogenomic drug response. At last year's show, Flatley had previewed the iPad app after earlier shelving a similar app for iPhone.

Flatley debuted the IGS service at the 2009 Consumer Genetics show with a price tag of $48,000. In 2010 he announced a price cut to $19,500. This year's $9,500 prices represents another significant plunge in individual sequencing.   

“The advances we’ve made with our sequencing platform have enabled us to offer breakthrough pricing for whole human genome sequencing,” said Flatley in a press release. “By making sequencing more affordable and developing tools like our new ‘MiGenome’ iPad application, we believe that we can significantly accelerate the adoption of individual genome sequencing which will, in turn, pave the way to a future where an individual’s genome sequence informs and personalizes his health care.”