Cypher Genomics Signs Deal with Illumina, Expands Executive Team

 

In the deal with Illumina, Illumina's sales force will promote Cypher's biomarker discovery service, Coral, to pharmaceutical companies in conjunction with Illumina's NextBio platform for data analytics and storage. The deal provides a great deal of sales muscle to Cypher, and the companies call the products perfect compliments. Cypher's genomic analysis platform provides highly accurate genome annotations combined with advanced statistical techniques to enable biomarker discovery studies with sample sizes in the hundreds, reflecting the reality of many Phase 2 clinical trials, the companies said in a press release. 

 

The company also formerly named a new President and COO, a new executive chairman, and two new board members. Ashley Van Zeeland (see, "In Conversation") maintains her role as co-founder and CEO. Adam Simpson was announced as president and COO. Simpson has been working with Cypher for a year, previously in the role of executive advisor. For the board of directors, Henry (Hank) Nordhoff jonied as executive chairman. Herbert Boyer, Ph.D., who co-founded and led Genentech as vice president, and Andrew von Eschenbach, M.D., the former commissioner of the FDA, both joined the board as directors.