, Columnist
Illumina Chases the Grail
Plans for a groundbreaking cancer screen are risky and could take years.
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If you want to highlight the combination of extreme ambition and potential futility in a startup, you can do worse than naming it "Grail."
Gene sequencing company Illumina did exactly that with an immodest new spinoff it announced on Sunday and then fleshed out at the JPMorgan health care conference in San Francisco on Monday. With financial backing from Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates, the plan is for Grail to build a test for cancer by sequencing tumor DNA fragments found in blood. This startup's name gives a hint of exactly what investors should think of it -- this could be transformative if it succeeds, but has a high chance of failing to deliver on those high hopes.