Cypher Genomics and Illumina have made a pact to co-promote Illumina's sequencing technology, the NextBio platform for data analytics and storage, and Cypher's Coral™ biomarker discovery service to pharmaceutical companies. The firms, through Illumina's sales team, will be promoting the products and service together as part of a solution that, they say, can facilitate development of genomic-based biomarkers from whole-genome sequence data for clinical trials and precision medicine.

Cypher says its technology can reduce the signal-to-noise in genomic information to help researchers find important biomarkers in sample sizes of the sort frequently used in early-stage drug development. It also claims that its genomic analysis platform can provide highly accurate genome annotations to enable biomarker discovery studies with sample sizes in the hundreds, which the firm believes would aid many researchers working on Phase II trials. 

Nick Naclerio, svp, corporate development and general manager, Enterprise Informatics of Illumina, said in a statement that Coral complements Illumina's whole-genome sequencing and NextBio platform nicely. “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,” he added.

Illumina has had a very good year so far: Just yesterday, the firm announced record second-quarter financial results, including a revenue of $448 million, an increase of 29% compared to $346 million in 2013's second quarter. Commenting on the results, Illumina's CEO Jay Flatley said, “With the most extensive sequencing portfolio available, we remain extremely well-positioned to develop and address the large and untapped market opportunities ahead of us.”

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