STAT Plus: ‘The largest application we can imagine’: Illumina and Grail CEOs defend their deal to investors
Shares of Illumina, the leader in DNA sequencing, have dropped 13% since news leaked last week that the company would be buying Grail, a startup developing a blood test to detect cancer. Obviously, not every investor loves the $8 billion deal.
But in an interview with STAT, the CEOs of the two firms — Illumina’s Francis deSouza and Grail’s Hans Bishop -— said t it would take time for investors to understand the advantages of combining the two firms. They argue that is particularly true in regard to the potential market for Grail’s two tests: Galleri, which will aim to detect cancer early in apparently healthy people, and a second, unnamed test, which is being designed to test for potential cases of cancer in patients who have symptoms of the disease.
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