Illumina's pitch for new machines: You, too, can sequence DNA

Can Illumina win over labs that have never tried DNA sequencing?

The company on Wednesday unveiled what it called its simplest machines yet for parsing molecular building blocks. The Miseq i100 and MiSeq i100 Plus come with an array of preloaded functions and require minimal training. They don’t require cold-chain storage. And they sell for much less than the company’s other DNA sequencers: $49,900 and $109,900, respectively.

Jacob Thaysen

Illumina is betting that the machines will attract those interested in DNA sequencing but who aren’t versed in the technology. The company helped usher in an explosion in genetic testing, though believes there’s still a large untapped market.

“Ease of use actually makes a very big difference, because the biggest barrier right now is that DNA sequencing is still kind of difficult,” CEO Jacob Thaysen told members of the media on Monday at Illumina’s headquarters in San Diego.

Thaysen said the new DNA sequencers aren’t likely to be a huge revenue driver for Illumina, at least right away. The company is hoping customers will eventually graduate to its top-of-the-line sequencers that cater to labs dealing in huge volumes of genomes. (The new machines are also designed for labs that run quick experiments before deciding whether to proceed with a bigger project.)

“The point is to get new customers and get them comfortable with our instruments,” Thaysen said.

It took Illumina more than three years to develop the new machines. The sequencers, it appears, are a response by Illumina to growing competition. Other companies have joined the race to bring down DNA sequencing costs, but Illumina wants to be known for more than the price tag of its offerings.

“Along with other recent announcements, it really seems that Illumina is leaning into the idea that the core sequencing technology is not going to be the driving factor for the sequencing market going forward,” said Shawn Baker, who runs the consulting firm SanDiegOmics. “Instead, it’s ease of use, simplicity, and improving other aspects of the overall workflow.”

He added that the machines aren’t “likely to have a big immediate impact on Illumina or their competition.”

Steve Barnard

As Illumina faces more competition, it’s also spending more time on market research. Steve Barnard, the company’s chief technology officer, said that Illumina now has closer conversations with customers, and would-be customers when developing products. That’s a bit of a departure from the past, when not many labs did DNA sequencing and Illumina was often guessing at what future users might want.

“To get that feedback is extremely important in this maturing marketplace,” Barnard said.

This isn’t Illumina’s first sequencer aimed at smaller labs. The company released benchtop machines in 2011, but the latest models are much simpler, faster and produce better data. In each run, the MiSeq i100 Plus is capable of 100 million single-end reads — a method of reading DNA fragments from one end to the other. Results come back in as little as four hours.