BioMerieux and Illumina to develop infection monitoring solution

BioMerieux and Illumina have signed an exclusive agreement to launch a next-generation sequencing epidemiology solution for service labs.

The companies have agreed to jointly develop applications for microbiology sequencing technologies within a four-year renewable period, the first of which will be an epidemiological solution offered by service labs for genotyping disease agents.

Illumina's MiSeq sequencing system will be combined with a jointly-developed pathogen genome database based on BioMerieux's culture collection, which contains more than 80,000 references and is one of the largest libraries of bacterial strains in the world.

With this epidemiology solution, public health and hospital microbiology laboratories will find it easier contain epidemics, avoid transmission of infectious agents and improve hospital practices where needed.

Jean-Luc Belingard, chairman of BioMerieux, said: "This collaboration is a first step that will enable BioMerieux to identify opportunities and fields of application that sequencing can bring to infectious disease diagnostics."

Last month, the company announced its sales data for the first nine months of 2014, during which it experienced year-on-year growth of 7.4 percent.