Cypher Genomics, Illumina partner to facilitate development of genomic-based biomarkers

Cypher Genomics, Inc., the genome informatics company, announced today a co-promotion agreement with Illumina to facilitate the development of genomic-based biomarkers from whole genome sequence data for precision medicine and clinical trials. Cypher Genomics and Illumina will jointly offer pharmaceutical companies, through Illumina's sales force, a solution including Illumina's market leading sequencing technology, the NextBio platform for data analytics and storage, and Cypher Genomics' biomarker discovery service, called Coral^TM. Cypher Genomics technology reduces the signal-to-noise in genomic information to uncover important biomarkers in sample sizes typical of early stage drug development studies.

"Cypher Genomics' biomarker discovery service is a perfect complement to Illumina's whole genome sequencing and our NextBio analytics platform," said Nick Naclerio, SVP Corporate Development and General Manager Enterprise Informatics of Illumina. "We look forward to working with Cypher Genomics to provide our mutual customers with the sequencing, data interpretation, and data mining they require for biomarker discovery with whole genome data."

"We founded Cypher Genomics to transform the practice of medicine through fast and accurate genome interpretation. Cypher Genomics' biomarker discovery service, Coral™, includes technology that has a proven track record of success with pharmaceutical companies to discover the genetic basis of response to drug therapy," states Ashley Van Zeeland, Ph.D., co-founder and chief executive officer of Cypher Genomics.

The benefits of biomarker discovery to deliver precision medicine is clear – better tools that can match therapies to patients not only improves clinical outcomes but also reduce clinical trial sizes, which can accelerate time to market for life-saving therapies. Many desire to look beyond biomarker panels to the whole genome, but biomarker discovery based on whole genome data generally has not been feasible due to the lack of statistical power within the small sample sizes of early clinical studies. Cypher's genomic analysis platform provides highly accurate genome annotations combined with advanced statistical techniques to enable biomarker discovery studies with sample sizes in the hundreds, reflecting the reality of many Phase 2 clinical trials.

Adam Simpson, president and chief operating officer of Cypher Genomics, added, "Working with Illumina to offer best-in-class sequencing and analysis to pharmaceutical companies enables acceleration of their personalized drug development efforts and will ultimately help deliver on the promise of precision medicine."