Illumina Launches Billion Cell Atlas to Advance Drug Discovery

Illumina, Inc. has announced the launch of the Illumina Billion Cell Atlas, a large-scale genomic dataset intended to strengthen the scientific foundation of drug discovery and biomedical research. The announcement was made from San Diego on Thursday, January 15, 2026.

The Billion Cell Atlas marks the first phase of Illumina’s long-term effort to generate data from five billion cells over the next three years. The initiative is designed to help researchers better understand disease mechanisms, evaluate potential drug targets, and improve the reliability of computational models used in pharmaceutical research. By providing a standardized and deeply characterized dataset, Illumina aims to address one of the key bottlenecks in translating genomic insights into viable therapies.

The project is being developed in collaboration with founding partners AstraZeneca, Merck, and Eli Lilly and Company. In its initial stage, the Atlas will focus on a carefully selected panel of cell lines relevant to major disease areas, including cancer research, immune-related disorders, neurological diseases, cardiometabolic conditions, and rare genetic disorders. Using CRISPR genetic perturbation across more than 200 cell lines, the project will systematically measure how changes in gene activity affect cellular behavior.

According to Illumina, this approach allows scientists to observe gene function at a scale and consistency that has not been possible with smaller or fragmented datasets. Company leadership noted that the size of the Atlas is intended to reduce experimental variability and improve confidence in downstream biological interpretation. Industry partners also highlighted the value of a shared reference dataset for comparing results across research programs and shortening early-stage discovery timelines.

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The dataset will be hosted on Illumina’s Connected Analytics cloud platform and processed using the company’s DRAGEN pipeline. Illumina expects the effort to generate approximately 20 petabytes of transcriptomic data within the first year. Developed under Illumina’s newly formed BioInsight business, the Billion Cell Atlas represents a significant infrastructure investment aimed at supporting more reproducible and data-driven drug research.