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Illumina, Inc.

Illumina is improving human health by unlocking the power of the genome.

Lobbying Activity

Meeting with Michele Picaro (Member of the European Parliament) and MedTech Europe and

20 Jan 2026 · Meeting

Meeting with Michele Piergiovanni (Cabinet of President Ursula von der Leyen)

20 Nov 2025 · To give an update of recent development in the company and sector

Meeting with Nicolás González Casares (Member of the European Parliament, Shadow rapporteur)

25 Jun 2025 · Health

Meeting with Waldemar Buda (Member of the European Parliament, Shadow rapporteur)

24 Jun 2025 · Exchange views on how innovation in genomics can support the EU’s strategic priorities

Meeting with Elena Nevado Del Campo (Member of the European Parliament)

24 Jun 2025 · Proyecto Genoma Europeo

Meeting with Alexandra Hild (Cabinet of Commissioner Ekaterina Zaharieva), Andreas Schwarz (Cabinet of Commissioner Ekaterina Zaharieva)

23 Jun 2025 · Exchange on Life Sciences Strategy and next Framework Programme

Meeting with Stine Bosse (Member of the European Parliament)

20 Mar 2025 · European health policy

Meeting with Oliver Schenk (Member of the European Parliament)

20 Mar 2025 · Genom sequencing

Meeting with Carmen Laplaza Santos (Head of Unit Research and Innovation)

26 Feb 2025 · Exchange of views on how to leverage of genomics data to accelerate breakthroughs in precision medicine and to support the implementation of Horizon Europe

Meeting with Vilija Sysaite (Cabinet of Executive Vice-President Stéphane Séjourné)

26 Feb 2025 · Genomic research in Europe

Response to Monitoring and reporting of molecular analytical data within foodborne outbreaks

18 Sept 2024

Illumina welcomes the European Commissions proposal for an implementing regulation to enable the Union and Member States to react more rapidly and trigger the implementation of preparedness and response measures for food-borne outbreaks of zoonotic diseases. Mandating EU countries to conduct whole genome sequencing analysis for suspected microorganisms will contribute to improving the investigation of food-borne outbreaks and identifying the source of the contamination. In turn, this will help reduce human cases and food recalls or withdrawals, benefiting both EU consumers and food business operators. These past few years, the world has faced a series public health crises largely attributable to infectious zoonotic diseases, transmissible from animals to humans. These have highlighted shortcomings in the ability of the European Union to react to crises in a coordinated manner, including creating the sufficient incentives to sharing consistent and comprehensive health data and implementing common measures to control outbreaks. The importance of ensuring adequate food-borne outbreaks surveillance, preparedness and response planning to ensure and protect the wellbeing and livelihood of people across Europe is now clear. In addition, the rapid and significant improvement of whole genome sequencing technologies over the past decade have enabled a shift towards large scale implementation for public health purposes, becoming a method of choice for outbreaks surveillance by regulators in other regions of the world (*). Finally, we also encourage the Commission to carefully consider the concerns raised among EU consumers, civil society, and food business operators. In particular, shedding light on the challenges with regards to harmonization of the surveillance methods and standardized nomenclature, the sufficient levels of transparency to reassure consumers and enable resilient public measures, and the establishment of robust incentives and protections for food business operators to share sensitive data. *FDA (2024) Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS) Program.
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Meeting with Petar Vitanov (Member of the European Parliament, Shadow rapporteur)

20 Sept 2023 · EHDS

Meeting with Tomislav Sokol (Member of the European Parliament, Rapporteur)

27 Jun 2023 · European Health Data Space - EHDS

Response to Cancer Screening Recommendation

22 Feb 2022

Screening targeting breast, cervical and colorectal cancers should be improved by piloting new technologies with a view to implementing them at population level as soon as possible. It is worth noting that 71% of total cancer deaths occur in cancers for which there is currently no established screening. For this reason, it is critical that that screening should not be limited to targeting breast, cervical and colorectal cancers: the latest genomics-based technologies that are now becoming available offer the possibility of screening for multiple types of cancer at the same time through a simple blood test. One such test, which originated in Illumina’s own labs, is being trialed in the UK by the NHS (as well as in the U.S.). This is a new multi-cancer early detection test that can diagnose 50 cancers at once in asymptomatic patients, and, uniquely, can identify the tissue in which a cancer has developed. Research in the US suggests that these tests could prevent over a quarter of five-year cancer deaths in those aged over 50. These tests may soon become available to European citizens and could save thousands of lives in Europe. Making these highly effective tests available would not only significantly improve patient outcomes, but would also reduce cancer-attributable healthcare costs by billions of euros. These technologies would enable improvements in early diagnosis an order of magnitude greater even than those envisaged by the EU’s ambitious Beating Cancer Plan. The UK, like most EU countries, has a centralized healthcare system, free for all at the point of care. This will likely offer the best example for EU countries of the benefits of rolling out such tests on a large scale. The UK has traditionally lagged EU Member States in cancer screening. It is currently piloting these new screening tests for patient above 50. The trial currently includes 140,000 patients. Should its outcome be positive, the trail will be expanded to 1 million patients, before the test is offered to all patients above 50, on an annual basis. Genomics-driven multi-cancer screening tests based on a blood draw are very simple to administer at the point of care. This means that these tests are also far easier to roll out and scale up than traditional, more invasive screening tests. These genomics-based tests are currently fairly expensive per test, but costs will diminish fast as volume increases – as we have seen in other genomics-based tests, such as non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT). Furthermore, they are highly cost-effective, enabling much earlier interventions, leading to better patient outcomes, shorter treatments, and lower costs on the healthcare system. Such tests also compare positively in terms of both sensitivity and specificity with certain existing and commonly used screening tests. They need to be followed up with further examination to confirm cases of cancer, but the fact that some of these tests can identify the tissue in which the cancer has developed simplifies this task. The goal is to maximize the benefits of cancer screening, such as early detection leading to reduced treatment costs, lower morbidity treatments, and ultimately reducing cancer deaths. Simultaneously, it is important to reduce the potential harms and costs of screening. The potential benefits of a cancer screening test are determined by 1) the number of cancers detected, especially for cancers for which there is not an existing screening test, and 2) the sensitivity to early-stage deadly cancers. The harms and costs of cancer screening test are primarily related to the false positive rate. A low false positive rate reduces the number and cost of unnecessary invasive procedures and medical imaging. The population level benefit of a test is also related to the incidence of cancer. For example, by limiting screening to people over 50 the incidence of cancer is ten times greater than the general population.
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Meeting with Katherine Power (Cabinet of Commissioner Mairead Mcguinness)

3 Dec 2021 · Cancer Screening tests, Illumina-GRAIL Merger

Meeting with Carole Mancel-Blanchard (Cabinet of Commissioner Elisa Ferreira)

3 Dec 2021 · Presentation of the merger case Illumina and Grail

Meeting with Chris Uregian (Cabinet of Vice-President Margaritis Schinas)

3 Dec 2021 · Healthcare benefits of Cancer test

Meeting with Eva Gerhards (Cabinet of Commissioner Helena Dalli)

3 Dec 2021 · Presentation of an early screening test by a cancer screening start-up. Its impact on health, early detection of cancer and especially on most vulnerable groups was discussed in the context of equality policy and the EU Beating Cancer strategy

Meeting with Joanna Stawowy (Cabinet of Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski)

3 Dec 2021 · The public health benefits and competition issues arising out of the merger between Illumina and GRAIL

Meeting with Maurits-Jan Prinz (Cabinet of Commissioner Thierry Breton)

12 Nov 2021 · Challenges of the health industrial ecosystem

Meeting with Anthony Whelan (Cabinet of President Ursula von der Leyen) and Covington Burling LLP

29 Sept 2021 · Illumina/GRAIL transaction, which in addition to important competition policy questions

Response to Proposal for a Regulation on serious cross-border threats to health

2 Feb 2021

Illumina welcomes the European Commission’s proposal for a regulation to enable the Union to react more rapidly and trigger the implementation of preparedness and response measures for cross-border threats to health. This year, the world has faced a public health crisis, the likes of which has not been seen for generations. It has highlighted shortcomings in the ability of the European Union to react to such crises in a coordinated manner and has made clear the importance of ensuring adequate pandemic surveillance, preparedness and response planning for the wellbeing and livelihood of European and global citizens, as well as the economy. We welcome the proposal to develop an EU health crisis and pandemic preparedness plan, and to define requirements for plans at the national level, together with an effective framework for reporting and auditing. It is crucial that we use this pandemic as a lesson, to ensure that countries across the region have in place the adequate mechanisms to ensure that the health sector, and supporting sectors, can not only withstand, but can actively fight against the emergence of any future threat to public health. Therefore, we welcome that the proposal will ensure that national preparedness plans are ‘stress tested’ and reviewed by the Commission. These plans must be regularly reviewed to ensure they are ready for use in the future. Amongst others, these plans should define requirements for national sequencing capacities. As the Commission has acknowledged in the Communication, ‘A united front to beat COVID-19’, published on 19th January, genome sequencing at scale is critical to quickly identify mutations to help prevent the spread of new variants of concern. However, EU Member States have been sequencing at a low level, without timely analysis of the data, meaning the benefits of this technology to contain the pandemic have not yet been fully realized. If carried out consistently, rapidly and at scale, genome sequencing will enable the early detection and monitoring of new variants of concern, which supports the containment of pathogens posing a threat to public health. This will enable the Commission to take decisive action to prevent a future pandemic. Therefore, the Commission must ensure, as part of its preparedness planning and auditing of national plans, that countries have adequate solutions for genomic sequencing with sufficient capacity, providing timely, actionable information. These systems must be maintained after the end of the pandemic so new threats to public health can be identified and counteracted rapidly when they arise. Furthermore, because these sequencing systems are versatile, they can be used for purposes other than surveillance in the future, such as to enable personalised medicine. This will also form a key aspect of the proposal to implement rules for an integrated surveillance system. We welcome the Commission’s proposal to create a strengthened, integrated epidemiological surveillance system at EU level, including improved data collection tools. It is crucial that there is an effective digital infrastructure in place at EU level to enable effective and real-time health data collection, storage and analysis, including technical capabilities and mechanisms for data exchange and protection. This will also require the updated frameworks of the future European health data space, which intends to improve the secure cross-border exchange of health data. Consistent sequencing data will be a crucial part of these data sets and it is important that the Commission ensures that Member States can provide this regularly. Finally, we also welcome the proposal to enable the Commission to formally declare a public health emergency at EU level, based on advice from an expert Advisory Committee. It is important that the EU is able to declare an emergency situation, triggering increased policy coordination and mechanisms to avoid shortages of crisis relevant medical supplies.
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Response to Proposal for a Regulation establishing a European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC)

2 Feb 2021

Illumina welcomes the European Commission’s proposal to to reinforce the mandate of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC). This year has clearly demonstrated the importance of adequate pandemic surveillance, preparedness and response planning for the wellbeing and livelihood of European and global citizens. As the proposal acknowledges, the pandemic exposed shortcomings in the Union’s ability to react effectively to health crises at EU level, including the ECDC’s ability to support the Commission and Member States during times of crisis and to promote EU coordination. Therefore, we welcome the proposal to reinforce the role of the ECDC to support the EU’s ability to prepare for and respond to health emergencies. We agree that the ECDC should have an important role to play in supporting the development of pandemic preparedness plans in Member States. It is crucial that we use this pandemic as a lesson, to ensure that countries across the region have in place the adequate mechanisms to ensure that national health systems can not only withstand, but can actively fight against the emergence of any future threat to public health. It is very important, therefore, that the ECDC is able to effectively support and monitor the preparedness of Member States to tackle emerging threats to public health, including identifying and helping to address gaps and coordinating preparedness planning. As part of this, the ECDC must have the capacity to help Member States to improve their sequencing capacity by providing technical and scientific support and advice. As the Commission has recently acknowledged in the Communication, ‘A united front to beat COVID-19’ , published on 19th January, genome sequencing and data analytics at scale are critical to quickly identify mutations and enable targeted actions to prevent the spread of new strains. If carried out consistently, rapidly and at scale, genome sequencing will enable the early detection and monitoring of new variants of concern, which supports the containment of pathogens which pose a threat to public health. It is, therefore, important that the ECDC can monitor the capacity of Member States to carry out continuous genomic sequencing and data analytics of emerging pathogens within the population, and can provide support and recommendations where necessary. This will also require the ECDC to help develop analytical platforms to support epidemiological surveillance at Union level, using digital technologies to compile and analyze the data provided by Member States, including genomic data. The ECDC must also be able to provide Member States with technical and scientific know-how to establish an integrated epidemiological surveillance system to ensure that surveillance data can be shared across borders, enabling the real-time, pan-European surveillance of emerging threats to public health. Finally, we welcome the proposal for the ECDC to develop a network of EU Public Health Reference Laboratories to promote good practices and common standards for surveillance, the reporting of outbreaks, and testing methods. For genomic sequencing to allow effective monitoring of the progression of virus variants or to detect new ones, sufficient numbers of appropriately selected samples must be sequenced. Therefore, these reference laboratories will play an important role in ensuring that national laboratories carry out sequencing regularly to generate usable data which can be shared with the Union in real-time to enhance epidemiological surveillance. This will enable threats from new variants or novel pathogens to be identified sooner and therefore contained more effectively.
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