Illumina partners with
private equity firm on gene JV: sources
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[August 18, 2015] By
Mike Stone and Julie Steenhuysen
(Reuters) - Gene-sequencing giant Illumina
Inc, private equity firm Warburg Pincus LLC and venture capital firm
Sutter Hill Ventures have agreed to invest $100 million to seed a new
consumer-facing human genome platform called Helix, according to people
familiar with the deal.
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San Francisco-based Helix aims to provide a new kind of environment
that will sequence, store and analyze individuals' genetic data and
provide a marketplace of services through various partners, allowing
people to explore their geneology or understand their risk for
inherited disease.
To accomplish that, Helix plans to create one of the world's largest
next-generation DNA sequencing labs and make the data accessible on
a secure and protected database.
Initial partners are diagnostic testing giant Laboratory Corporation
of America (LabCorp) and Mayo Clinic's Center for Individualized
Medicine, which are investing in Helix and will offer services to
its customers.
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Initially, Mayo will help Helix develop applications focused on
consumer education and health-related queries. LabCorp will develop
and offer analysis and interpretation services through Helix's
platform. Customers will control how their data is accessed.
Discussions with several other potential partners are underway,
according to the sources who asked not to be named because they were
not authorized to speak to the media.
Illumina, Sutter Hill, LabCorp and Mayo did not immediately respond
to requests for comment.
Helix hopes to avoid some of the issues encountered by
direct-to-consumer genetic testing company 23andMe, which in late
2013 was barred by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration from
providing customers with health information. The company still
performs genetic testing and offers information on ancestry, and
recently won FDA approval for a test for Bloom syndrome.
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The company intends "to work extremely closely with the FDA," one of
the sources said, adding that the platform would include health
information, delivered through partners such as Mayo or LabCorp.
Helix intends to sequence a much larger swath of the genome than
23andMe, at minimum testing for all the protein coding genes that
make up the exome and account for 85 percent of disease.
Operations for Helix are expected to kickoff in mid-2016, a source
familiar with the deal said.
The investment is expected to erode Illumina’s non-GAAP earnings per
share guidance by about $0.10 in 2016.
New York-based Warburg Pincus, with more than $35 billion under
management, has invested in healthcare platforms in the past but
this is their first major foray into genomics.
(Reporting by Mike Stone in New York and Julie Steenhuysen in
Chicago; Editing by Bernard Orr)
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