May 16, 2022

Illumina, Deerfield Ink Drug Development Deal   On May 5, the San Diego DNA sequencing giant announced a partnership with New York-based healthcare investment management firm Deerfield Management to apply a genetic-led approach to develop novel therapies for diseases with unmet medical needs. Alex AravanisCTOIllumina The five-year partnership will leverage Illumina’s genomic tools and data with Deerfield’s operational and financial expertise managing $14 billion in AUM (assets under management) across 200 public and private portfolio companies – many in the therapeutic space – to guide successful candidates through clinical development. Under the terms of the partnership with Deerfield, Illumina will provide a DNA-driven target discovery platform alongside its AI-powered genome interpretation software while Deerfield will provide expertise in translational science and help guide new drug candidates through preclinical testing. “This partnership serves as a new company (NewCo) creation engine where Illumina and Deerfield will jointly decide whether to progress validated targets into pre-clinical development, at which point a NewCo will be formed,” said Illumina CTO Alex Aravanis. “It is a co-ownership model that gives both Illumina and Deerfield equity in the NewCo, generating drug target assets with long-term optionality that includes royalties if a drug reaches the market,” Aravanis added. “The partnership is openly structured where both parties are aligned in near and long-term success.”   Joydeep GoswamiChief Strategy and Corporate Development OfficerIllumina Illumina Chief Strategy and Corporate Development Officer Joydeep Goswami said this is due to “gaps in the biological understanding of the complex nature of many diseases” and a drug discovery process that is “difficult, expensive and slow.”   Goswami pointed out that Deerfield VP of Genetics and Genomics Matt Nelson’s paper published in “Nature” supported using genetic data to select the best targets and indications in discovery and can improve success rates, speed to market, and cost in the development of new drugs. “Our partnership will work to create efficiencies across the drug development process, through data and AI, and change how we can bring novel therapeutics to market, overcoming the hurdles traditional models have failed to overcome,” Aravanis added. “Leveraging Illumina’s sequencing platform to grow data assets at massive scale, our best-in-class AI tools to interpret the genome and Deerfield’s deep scientific and investment expertise in the therapeutics space, we believe this is a unique engine to industrialize drug development.”   Illumina and Deerfield plan to identify therapeutic targets using Illumina’s genetically driven target discovery platform built with Illumina Connected Analytics and AI-driven genome interpretation solutions. James FlynnManaging PartnerDeerfield Management “Illumina is an innovative global leader in genomics,” said Deerfield Management Managing Partner James Flynn. “Together, with Deerfield’s expertise in translational research, the partnership will fuel advancements from idea to clinic more efficiently with the goal of treating some of the world’s most life-threatening diseases.”