Spare a thought for Illumina. The $56 billion dollar titan of genomics has become the world’s leading supplier of DNA sequencing technology. That’s been great for the company’s bottom line over the years. But Illumina’s market dominance is making it incredibly difficult to expand the business.
The latest example came this week when the Federal Trade Commission moved to block Illumina’s $7.1 billion merger with the cancer testing company Grail. Now Grail’s products are meant to detect cancer at the earliest stages when it’s most susceptible to treatment.
It’s important to keep an eye on the strategic advantages that companies are pursuing in order to achieve a monopoly in trade. In the case of healthcare genomics around the world, this may be extremely dangerous. The FTC’s fears are real, and their concerns are legitimate.
Uh… That last bit… Grail IS a startup formed by Illumina. The wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GRAIL_(company)