Illumina | TIME 100 Companies

Illumina is a child of the genetic revolution launched in the late 1990s during the breathless run-up to scientists’ publishing the first draft map of the human genome in 2001. Founded in 1998 (as Solexa) by University of Cambridge scientists to exploit the coming promise of genomics and its myriad uses, Illumina and its initial genetic-sequencing machine didn’t churn out its first commercial genome until 2006—at a cost of $150,000. Over the following decades, its engineers refined the chemical reactions involved in breaking up and reading genetic fragments, providing deeper and more accurate readings more quickly.

Illumina sequencers can now decode a human genome, among the larger genomes around, in about an hour at a cost of $600. “We’ve publicly announced plans to bring that cost down again, to $100 in the near future,” says deSouza, who took the helm of Illumina in 2016 after being recruited from software security company Symantec. “Democratizing access and making sequencing available to everyone helps to deliver the promise of genomics to improve human health, and that’s good business for us.”

Read more about Illumina: https://time.com/collection/time100-c...
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