Illumina Acquires NextBio

October 28, 2013 | Illumina today announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Santa Clara-based NextBio. NextBio's powerful big-data platforms aggregate and analyze large quantities of phenotypic and genomic data for research and clinical applications. (see, “The NextBio Thing in Bioinformatics). 

 

With the addition of NextBio's platform upon completion of the acquisition, Illumina says it will be able to offer customers enterprise level bioinformatics solutions that accelerate the discovery of new associations between the human genome and disease, and ultimately, enable the application of those discoveries within healthcare.

 

Analysts say that Illumina intends to integrate NextBio's platform with BaseSpace (see, Illumina Launches BaseSpace Cloud Platform for MiSeq) in order to provide researchers better access to patient data. Analysts don't expect the acquisition to have a material near-term financial impact, but do believe NextBio's dataset and high-profile customer base will enhance Illumina's bioinformatics offerings and will help support the company's current dominance in the sequencing market.

 

"This agreement with NextBio demonstrates Illumina's unwavering commitment to drive the adoption of sequencing in new markets and vastly improve the genomic information workflow," said Jay Flatley, President and CEO of Illumina in a statement. "NextBio enables the classification and aggregation of phenotypic and clinical data within a single environment and allows analysis of that data at unprecedented speed and scale. The combination of Illumina's BaseSpace cloud computing environment for next-generation sequencing with NextBio's platform for integrating patient data will allow us to deliver solutions that seamlessly integrate the entire workflow from sample to result."

 

Illumina is confirming its 2013 financial guidance provided on October 21, 2013. The transaction is expected to close by the end of October.