Thursday, October 24, 2019

CMA Drops the (Preliminary) Hammer on ILMN-PacBio

Today the United Kingdom's Competition and Merger Authority (CMA) issued their preliminary report on the proposed acquisition of Pacific Biosciences by Illumina.  The report has no dry British phrasing: they clearly state that the merger is anticompetitive and that the only legal remedy is to block the transaction.  Interestingly, today was also the scheduled Illumina Q3 earnings call, but the subject wasn't even broached there.

Monday, October 21, 2019

QIAGEN Quashes GeneReader

Two weeks ago QIAGEN announced they will discontinue development of their GeneReader short read instrument and move their portfolio of gene panel tests over to the Illumina MiSeq and NextSeq. Existing instrument owners will continue to be supported for an indefinite period.  Thus ends QIAGEN's effort to build a fully vertically integrated sample-to-answer diagnostic sequencing system, just short of 4 years from the system's launch. What can be learned from this and how does this reshape the sequencing market?