NEW YORK – Illumina has acquired IDbyDNA, a company developing metagenomic technology for infectious disease testing and pathogen surveillance, GenomeWeb has learned today.

The firms have had an alliance for the past two years comarketing IDbyDNA's Explify platform for use with Illumina's NGS instruments and library preparation kits. They also were codeveloping research-use-only workflows.

The partners offer a respiratory pathogen panel enrichment kit that identifies more than 280 pathogens, including SARS-CoV-2, and more than 1,200 antimicrobial resistance alleles. It runs on Illumina’s NextSeq 550 sequencing system and utilizes IDbyDNA’s Explify analysis software.

Illumina didn’t respond by press time to a request for comment. The deal was confirmed by a former executive of IDbyDNA, a University of Utah spinout.

As part of the deal, IDbyDNA Cofounder and Chief Medical Officer Robert Schlaberg has joined Illumina as distinguished scientist, infectious disease and VP.

This announcement was originally published on GenomeWeb here: https://www.genomeweb.com/infectious-disease/illumina-acquires-idbydna#.Ys2MluzMIUo