Illumina (ILMN): Building The Picks And Shovels Of the Genomic Age

Genome Sequencing Cost Curve

For most of the history of medicine, doctors have been limited to observing symptoms and trying to alleviate them. This has been especially true for non-infectious diseases stemming from dysfunction in the body, including genetic diseases.

With the discovery of DNA structure and function, awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize in Medicine, we started to have a better understanding of how the biological system truly works. PCR technology, awarded the 1993 Nobel Prize in Medicine, would open new ways to analyze it.

This further expanded when full genomes started to be sequenced. The first human genome was sequenced in 2003 after 13 years of hard work, for a cost of $3B. Quickly, full-genome sequencing started to become cheaper and cheaper. By 2007, it would cost “only” $1M to sequence a full genome. By 2014, just $1,000. Today, the cost stands at around $200 and is still dropping.

This mimics Moore’s Law, which made computers a part of our daily lives by predicting that the number of transistors per square inch on a microchip would double each year while the manufacturing cost per component would halve.

However, the decrease in genomic costs has been even more spectacular. It was made possible by NGS: Next Generation Sequencing. It uses the advances of silicon chips, but instead of reading binary code, it reads genetic code. And the more silicon chip manufacturing progressed, the more NGS became efficient.

In just the last 10 years, the cost per genome has been collapsing to the point that it is becoming a cheap test among the arsenal of tests available to medical professionals.

Source: Illumina