Jared Whitlock of Endpoints News has the exclusive on Illumina CEO Jacob Thaysen's view on the future of the industry – and why Illumina is poised to bring multiomics to scale.
At the headquarters of Illumina last week, CEO Jacob Thaysen bounded up a coiled staircase that mimics a DNA strand. The architectural flourish at the company’s campus is a representation of just how fundamental DNA sequencing has been to Illumina since it was founded in 1999. It has become a fixture in labs that use its gene-reading machines to discover drugs and diagnose patients. Thaysen took the CEO job 18 months ago with a mandate to make major changes. And in an overlook atop the building’s DNA-shaped staircase, he spoke with Endpoints News about his plans for Illumina beyond just genetics. While DNA is still core to Illumina’s business, Thaysen has bet that the company needs to expand further into what’s known as multiomics — a buzzy field that includes decoding proteins, RNA and other elements of biology. “Illumina has over the last 20 years really been driving the genomics revolution. The company is super proud about that,” Thaysen, 49, told Endpoints. “But what we’ve also seen is that biology is, of course, much more complicated.” Read more in my latest for Endpoints News. It tracks a push from Illumina and other companies into multiomics.