Over the last few years, next-generation sequencing company Illumina (San Diego) has made a concerted effort to diversify. With a growing pipeline of diagnostics products and two strategic acquisitions (in 2012 BlueGnome, a maker of cytogenetics and in vitro fertilization screening products and this January noninvasive prenatal diagnostics maker Verinata Health), the company is moving away from being strictly an instrument manufacturer, even while its core business remains strong with 2012 revenue expected to be between $1.134 billion and $1.144 billion. Gregory Heath, Ph.D., general manager of diagnostics at Illumina, recently spoke to DTTR about the company’s strategic vision for its diagnostics segment and plans for the division’s growth. Please tell us about Illumina’s strategic decision to diversify and enter the diagnostics market. A little over four years ago Illumina decided they were quite successful in the life science business so they wanted to diversify into other areas, and molecular diagnostics is one of the biggest areas. I joined from Roche, and we started building up the diagnostics business. One of the first things we did was look at strategy and selected a couple of areas where we thought our technology would really be a good fit. Our technologies are […]