Partnership will expand use of next-generation sequencing (NGS) to help diagnose patients quickly and more accurately.

NEW DELHI, 14 March, 2022 - Illumina Singapore, subsidiary of Illumina Inc (NASDAQ: ILMN) and Trivitron Healthcare, one of India's largest medical technology companies, have entered into a strategic partnership to develop and expand the use of next-generation sequencing (NGS)-based in-vitro diagnostic tests (IVD) in India.

Over the next four years, Illumina and Trivitron intends to develop and distribute a suite of standardized, commercial IVD assays to deliver an effective and non-invasive way of diagnosing cancers, determining infectious pathogens, and identifying prenatal diseases. The assays will be cost-effective, easy to use, and have high throughput capabilities.

“Illumina believes in democratizing access to sequencing. There is a vital need to make genomic technology and precision medicine available to all.” said Gretchen Weightman, Head of Global Commercial Strategy and General Manager of Asia Pacific and Japan at Illumina.

Ms Weightman added “Our collaboration with Trivitron will increase access for patients in India to genomics and expand on Illumina's solid history and broad portfolio of partnerships with industry leaders, with the united goal of advancing diagnostics and precision medicine.” 

“We are pleased to announce our partnership with Illumina as we will be able to develop creative, adaptable, and scalable solutions to address the demands of Indian patients as a result of our collaboration.” said Dr. GSK Velu, Chairman & Managing Director, Trivitron Healthcare.

“With this partnership, Trivitron will build improved NGS-based diagnostic tests across a variety of disease categories on Illumina’s sequencing technology as part of this collaboration. The improved and locally-designed diagnostic tests will be manufactured and marketed by Trivitron following regulatory approvals.” he said.

In numerous neurological and rare disorders, where clinical characteristics can be confusing, NGS-based approaches have demonstrated considerable increases in disease detection rates over other approaches. Similarly, tailored NGS panels have allowed for the rapid, non-invasive, and cost-effective diagnosis and prognosis of a variety of malignancies, as well as the detection of infectious pathogens and the identification of a variety of prenatal disorders.

In addition to this partnership, in August 2020, Illumina collaborated with the Institute of Genomics & Integrative Biology in New Delhi to evaluate COVIDSeq and increase availability of frontline testing.